I was writing a quickie for Ariel, the BBC in house magazine, about the new Google archive news service and thought I would, you know, check how well it worked. So I typed in “Ampthill Claimant” as an example of the kind of story that is now almost entirely forgotten, but in its day filled a lot of newsprint, even in America. I only got five results — clearly they are not indexing English papers — and none from older than 1976, though the scandal dates from the 1920s. So they have not got back very far with their digitising, either. When I clicked on a link whose text was … claim to the estate of the Baron Ampthill hinged on his contention that he … this year in Ireland at the age of 80 THE NEW CLAIMANT is John Russell, … I got this —
Followed by a demand for more money if I wanted to know what it really meant. Thanks, Google, but no thanks. This isn’t even Beta.