First anniversary of Google exiting newspaper digitization

A year ago I blogged about Google's regrettable decision to no longer pursue newspaper digitization.

Their statement was that

Users can continue to search digitized newspapers at http://news.google.com/archivesearch, but we don’t plan to introduce any further features or functionality to the Google News Archives and we are no longer accepting new microfilm or digital files for processing.

They are true to their word that nothing new has been introduced and the newspapers are still accessible. For that we can be thankful. But the search capability that was originally available has been crippled to the point that the collection is little more than browse files, still useful but disappointing.