A new news archive

This is too good (or at least interesting) to skip posting: Google has launched a news archive search. This will solve the problem with Google News only having recent stories.

I searched 'elian gonzalez' and got lots of stories; most seem to be from CNN at first glance, but there are also stories from pay archives like Highbeam and Newsbank, with notes about the cost of retrieval. A really nice feature of this is the 'Timeline' that arranges stories by year and date. Here's the Elian story. (Note, however, in the Timeline, which shows stories from 2000, there are no Miami Herald stories. Huh?)

This should be a good new tool for researchers, at least those without access to archives like Nexis and Factiva....But note the San Francisco Chronicle story announcing this also warns people that they should check with their local library for access to free content online before paying through this service. (Via Romenesko.)