Just to be clear: R.J. Pittman has nothing against blogs. In fact, he says he's been campaigning to "establish a place for blogs" in Google News.
"When [Google News] was first developed, blogs weren't mainstream," says Pittman, Google's general manager of global search properties and user experience. (He oversees a number of Google search products including news, books, scholar, etc.)
Pittman, who has a few favorite blogs of his own, including Ars Technica and Uncrate, says he's working to get more blogs on the Google News "inclusion list" of sources that get indexed.
The practice of excluding certain blogs has been a bone of contention for many writers, who argue they've been unfairly left off Google's news crawler, potentially missing out on significant traffic.
"The growth [of blogs] has certainly pumped the pace of getting us to revisit the inclusion guidelines," Pittman says. "Of course, it helps that our founders have their favorite blogs now."
So is this a pet interest of his?
"It's more than that, I'd say it's a mission," Pittman says.
Photo: Jonathan Snyder/Wired.com
