Jyoti Basu dies at 95… an era comes to an end by Rahul on January 17, 2010

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The veteran Marxist leader died today at 95 with the entire nation mourning at his death. One of the most pragmatic leaders who played a pivotal role in shaping his party, Jyoti Basu commands awe and respect from personalities transcending all boundaries. It is no doubt a moment of grief and the end of an era with the demise of the longest serving chief minister in contemporary India.

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Google News finally responds to News Pubs by Rahul on January 6, 2010

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As most of the news agencies have been crying out of Google’s supposedly thieving ways of indexing news where users can simply search in Google News and read an article from leading newspapers by a click for free, they haven’t yet taken any stern step as most of these news sites earn a lot of their revenue from visitors arriving from such search results only. In fact, it’s hard to believe how well a news site would thrive without getting any visitor from a search engine as good as Google.

What Google has innovatively done is it has provided these news sites a certain level of flexibility, whether they want to allow or not allow visitors who will reach their sites through them and read for free, and if they allow, by how much. Google is allowing publishers a First Five clicks free program by which a visitor will be able to click five times for free. After that he will be asked to subscribe or sign up for some specific amount of money to read through the desired articles.

There will surely be some effect because of these changes. Since most regular visitors prefer free articles, they will surely move away and navigate to other sites to find their relevant content rather than paying up. Though some people will surely pay up to get quality articles from top sites and subscribe for specific periods of months or years. It will be interesting to wait-n-watch what happens.

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