Google Building World's Largest Newspaper Archive

Sam Gustin says: For some time, Google chief executive Eric Schmidt has been bemoaning the "crisis" afflicting American newspapers. Addressing shrinking budgets for investigative journalism recently, Schmidt called the situation, "a tragedy for America."

Now, as if to remind people of the golden age of print journalism, Google has launched a new service designed to create a massive library of old newspaper clippings, and, you guessed it, "make it universally accessible and useful."

Remember back in the days of yore, before ye olde internets, when you'd take a horse-drawn carriage to your local library and pore through microfiche film of old newspapers? Think of this as newspaper microfiche...for every newspaper ever printed, anywhere in the world. Available online, via Google.

"Around the globe, we estimate that there are billions of news pages containing every story ever written," the company wrote on its blog. "The problem is that most of these newspapers are not available online. We want to change that."

To get a sense of the new service, check out this clipping from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from July 21, 1969, covering the first humans to walk on the moon.