Google has been running a timeline experiment for quite some time now, and I've mentioned it in the past. They've played around with it some more and changed the way it looks on the screen, which I think is a great improvement.
There are various options, such as type of resource (news, blogs, music and artworks for example) and you can change the display to month, year or decade if you wish.
This is where the problem with the resource rears its head. I did a search on Barack Obama, and expected early news references to talk about his early days in politics, but found a reference to 2002 which was from the Guardian newspaper talking about the problems he was going to face when taking office as president. It turns out that the article started with "Ever since January 11 2002, when the first 20 prisoners were flown in from Afghanistan in orange jumpsuits and shackles". Consequently you end up with results like this:
Meanwhile Google is saying this is "a web application that organizes information
chronologically. Google News Timeline allows users to view news,
scanned newspapers and magazines, blog posts, sports scores, and more
on a zoomable, graphical timeline." Clearly it doesn't - or at least, it doesn't do it very well.
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