Google vs. Yahoo in the online news battle

For all the moaning about the impact of Google News from various publishers, it’s worth remembering that Yahoo News is still several times larger. In fact, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, Yahoo News has 41 million unique visitors in 2009 to Google’s 15 million. That tidbit was part of a longer look at the two very different approaches Yahoo and Google are taking toward delivering news online:

“Last week, Yahoo unveiled the Upshot, a blog created by the Sunnyvale portal’s growing staff of editors and reporters, who will use search and other user data to help determine what they’ll cover and how.

That announcement followed the introduction of a new version of Google News, which allows users to customize the content they see, but leaves the writing and editing to others.

Yahoo’s new blog highlights its transformation into a 21st century media company, a destination that uses a combination of technology and humans to find or create the content people want.

Meanwhile, Google continues to demonstrate an unflinching faith in the ability of increasingly sophisticated search technology to evaluate and point to the most relevant content from across the Internet.”

So far, Yahoo is getting the better of it, and Upshot will be an interesting experiment to watch. I’m not convinced that the desire or market for personalization is as great as many people think.