Fifteen and 10 years ago, there was a hope that the Internet will bring peace to the world. We thought that if people will be able to read the views of everyone, and talk to everyone, the road to world peace will be shorter.

Now we know that this Utopian wish was, well, Utopian.

But we are not losing hope.

Google News enables us to view the news as other people are seeing them. There is a drop down list at the left side of the screen where one can choose to read the news as they are viewed in other parts of the world.

I suggest a new feature to Google News – Random View

You can get the feeling of it in a small project I have created.

http://info.org.il/other-news/

I suggest adding Random (En), Random (Ar), Random (Fr) and maybe Random (De).

When people will access http://news.google.com/news?ned=en_ra they will get the news page of a random country in English. Refreshing the page will get them another view from another country.

What do you think?

I would be more interested if Google News could juxtapose news stories with opposing view points (in different countries) and indicate that on the site itself.

Interesting, but not a fully developed concept yet. To be of use a serendipitous reader would need to know whose (what "other people's") view is being served in each instance – perhaps that info is already there, only I missed it. Also, an "original view" would need to be available at all times for comparison duties. Otherwise, it will be just another, and perchance less centered, news view.

[On a practical level, you need to break the leading "Serendipitize your news reading – Click here to read news as seen by people from other countries" string into two lines placed in an adaptable-size panel. Otherwise the string will get cropped the narrower the window and the larger the textsize of the reader. Contrary to assumptions, not every Google News consumer has a 20/20 vison.]