Leading Internet search engine company Google introduced a new blog yesterday called Google News Blog, aimed at providing information about the company’s Google News service in a more informal way than through the use of traditional press releases. The blog will allow the Google News staff to share information about new features and to provide tips for using Google News, according to the blog’s initial posting by Google’s Business Product Manager Joshua Cohen. “We think there are two kinds of people interested in Google News: those newshounds who use it to gather and read the news -- and news publishers,” Mr. Cohen wrote on the blog, and also described the company’s hopes for the new forum, “We hope publishers will learn a bit more about what Google News readers like and expect, and readers will learn a bit more about all the great content publishers churn out every day.” The new blog also hopes to inform users how Google News works. Cohen noted, “We hope we can demystify Google News a bit and give you as much insight as possible into how it works,” and also hopes that readers of the new blog will offer helpful insight the company can use. While the new blog doesn’t allow users to leave their own comments directly, Cohen urged those wanting to engage in discussion to visit Google’s related Google News “user to user” discussion group, where “any individual with a question or comment about Google News is welcome to post,” according to a notice on the group web page.

The Google News Help Group is where users will be able to comment on information written about on the new blog, and engage in discussion with Google News employees. The help group is, according to its charter, “intended to foster discussion among those who use Google News to search or publish news articles.” Google also provides separate help centers for publishers and for users of Google News. The publishers help center offers information about getting online news articles featured on Google News, and describes the process Google News uses to select news from publishers.

Google News is an automated news web site that gathers news headlines from more than 4,500 sources around the world, and groups them into categories. Users can click on the news headlines to visit the web sites where individual news stories reside, and in some cases can read a short sentence from certain news stories on the Google News web site. The articles Google News selects are chosen using an automated system of computer evaluation, which Google says features stories that are “sorted without regard to political viewpoint or ideology.” Google News allows users to personalize which news headlines they wish to view, and to receive updated news alerts on a weekly, daily or “as-it-happens” basis.

The new Google News Blog announced yesterday brings to 65 the number of blogs the company is operating.