Google News launches in Arabic

Google has launched a version of its news aggregator service that links to stories in Arabic .

The search giant claimed that an increase in the amount of Arabic sources reporting online had prompted the latest expansion of Google News .

"This edition is a little different than the other 35. Normally, we target editions to a specific region like a country, but the Arabic edition targets the entire Arab region of the world," said a posting on the official Google blog .

"So Arabic speakers from more than 20 countries now have access to an especially wide variety of perspectives on the news being published in their language."

Despite the wide range of countries included, the service works in the same way as other Google News products .

"Arabic readers can visit the Google News homepage to see a compilation of links to top news headlines all in one view, look for news just in their favourite categories, or search within news stories for particular terms," said the blog.