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Entrepreneur, Dec, 2004 by Amanda C. Kooser

Battle of the newsbots: It sounds like a bad science fiction movie, but it's actually shaping up to be a big timesaver for entrepreneurs. Google and Microsoft have developed rival services that do essentially the same thing, gather news. More than that, they aggregate news from thousands of sources and provide customized news feeds. Microsoft's offering is available through its MSNBC (www. msnbc.msn.com) site and is called Newsbot. Google calls its service Google News (http://news.google.com).

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This rivalry is good news for news-hungry entrepreneurs. Both services were in beta form at press time, but expect advances in convenience and scope by the time you read this. The way they're set up, you can search or browse through headlines from their many sources. Google also features a News Alerts service that e-mails you as updates to your area of interest become available. For keeping an eye on world news, both Google and MSN also provide links to international versions of their news sites.

While news aggregation isn't new, the level of sophistication and automation has improved greatly. The competition between search engines should push innovation along. Busy entrepreneurs who need to stay up to date will find these services extremely useful.--A.C.K.

Business Services Industry

Heard the news?

Entrepreneur, Dec, 2004 by Amanda C. Kooser

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