Google to Offer News Archive

Google Inc. is expanding its online news index to include stories published years ago, continuing its efforts to create new sales channels for long-established media and make its Web site more useful.

The archive, to be unveiled today, includes articles from media outlets including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Time magazine and The Washington Post. Information storehouses such as LexisNexis, Factiva and HighBeam Research also have opened up sections of their databases to Google's expanded index.

Until now, Google's four-year-old news-search service has focused primarily on stories posted on the Web in the past 30 days.

The new feature will share only excerpts from stories related to users' requests. To see the full stories, users will be sent to the Web sites that own the content, which gives media outlets a chance to charge for access to the full stories -- a common practice in distributing historical information.

Google will not collect any commission for the sales referrals, hoping instead to make money indirectly from increased usage of its site.

The arrangement marks Google's latest attempt to demonstrate the value of its search engine to the traditional media.