Just in case you didn’t know already: When someone talks about Google News, they probably aren’t talking about the Newsgroups Reader (formerly known as Deja.com) but the real and new Google News Beta.

Now Google News really is something cool and serious at the same time. What it does is gather headlines from around the globe (or just your local area, whatever you tell it to gather and sort them into their respective ressorts. And so, when you read a headline on Google News, the link will take you to the page the headline comes from, like Time or Spiegel or others. But the real clue is that there are also links for all the other sites that have that particular headline and and article about it.

And this brings us to freedom of choice and freedom of information. In these strange times too much people only get their news and therefore their options from CNN or other big stations. But those of course only represent that the majority in the country (the Bush cabinet in case of CNN) wants to see and hear. So if you have the choice of reading the same news on like 20 different stations, you can gather the truth for yourself and really make up your own opinion.

Google News Beta