Google News, which functions primarily through algorithms, recently ran a test where it used live human editors to collect news stories, reports paidContent. This marks a big step for Google News, which at its launch in 2002 bragged "this page was generated entirely by computer algorithms without human editors."

Google maintains that the test was merely an experiment and that the company does not at the moment plan to make human editors a permanent part of the company. Moreover, "editors picks" comes amidst re-design rumours concerning Google. Yet, paidContent notes, it is important to remember that 3 years ago Google made another move away from automatic aggregation, which was pulled last summer.

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