What do you think of this?

The main page of Google News Timeline displays the top stories divided by columns, with each column representing a day. Users can drag the results left, right, up or down, much as they can with Google Maps, to see different days or to scroll deeper within a day. They can also change the time intervals to weekly, monthly or yearly. One of the interesting features of the main news page is that it includes Time magazine covers, so users can easily scan world events over the years through that prism.

But when it is used for searching, Google News Timeline becomes more interesting. The service includes current stories gathered by Google News, as well as archival news; scanned newspapers, magazines and books; blog posts; sports scores; and media like music and movies. Users can search specific categories, including all news, but also news quotes or news photos, blogs, TV shows and even prizes, like the Nobel.

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I didn't like any of the examples they gave in the article about how you can use this app. They all seemed pretty frivolous - searching for Jack Nicholson movies?? I can do that with IMDB or Wikipedia at this point. And the click and drag feature? Really? The scroll bar seemed to work just fine and was less cumbersome.

But if you can use it as a true timeline, i suppose it could help with following the evolution of a story like the Attorney General firings or the NSA wiretapping or the Plame scandal. If you just searched Google for any of these things, you'd get them in order of popularity and relevance, not chronologically. Although, right now, you can do a search in plain old Google News and sort your hits chronologically........now i'm confused about the purpose of this new toy. So, i ask again, what do you think?

Its to see how fast important stories get buried, and crap news takes over the headlines. Now all you need are charts and graphs. Who doesn't like charts and graphs?