Google expands online news index to include older articles

Google is expanding its online news index to include stories published years ago, continuing the Internet search leader's recent efforts to create new sales channels for long-established media while it strives to make its own Web site even more useful.

The new archives feature will only share excerpts from stories related to users' requests, which are expected to range from seminal moments in history to minutiae about sports and science.

To see the full stories, Google's visitors will be sent to the Web sites that own the content. Those referrals figure to provide media outlets with more opportunities to charge for access to the full stories - a common practice when people want to read historical information.

Google won't collect any commissions for the sales referrals, hoping instead to make money indirectly from increased usage of its own site - the hub of a vast advertising network that accounted for most of the company's $1.3 billion profit during the first half of this year.

The arrangement marks Google's latest attempt to demonstrate the value of its search engine to the traditional media, a segment that has sometimes railed against the Mountain View-based company for profiting from the display of content owned by others.