Google News allows those cited in news stories to post comments

Google announced on Wednesday that it will add an “experimental feature” to its Google News home page.

In a move that certainly differentiates online news from anything print media can equal, Google is inviting “actual participants” in news stories posted on its site to add comments to the story in which they are mentioned.

The announcement includes a promise that “comments will be published in full, without any edits.”

From a business perspective, at the least, Google is doing what every Internet service that shares its customers with other services tries to do: own the customer.

In telephony, for example, the fight over who owns the customer is often between the carrier and the content provider.

In Google’s case, Google News is an aggregation site for news articles from major newspapers, not only in the United States but around the world.

Up until now, a user clicking on a news article link was sent to that publication’s site, so in theory, that site took possession of the customer.

Now, however, Google can generate its own news by leveraging the publications’ hard work of reporting and adding comments from the newsmakers.

It is a way for Google to get readers back to its site from the link and, in essence, own the customer.

I’m not sure what the ramifications of this service are. You can bet that news organizations are going to rethink allowing the use of their stories on the Google News site.

It is also a way to hold readers — according to Nielsen ratings, a very important new metric — for longer periods of time on the Google site.

From a news point of view, heaven knows what it will mean once politicians get their spin doctors to follow up on every negative news story with a lengthy comment.

If nothing else, it will employ more people, I suppose.

Speaking of comments, how about some analysis from those reading this blog? I’d like to know what you think the fallout from this will be.