Google announced last year its project to digitise old newspapers and make them searchable, with reportedly millions of articles available when it launched. It has now apparently quadrupled the number of newspapers in that archive, adding articles from the Halifax Gazette, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Village Voice, the Manila Standard and The Nation.

Included in this new swathe of digitized newspapers is the 2 June, 1753 edition of the Halifax Gazette. News reported in that edition includes an earthquake in Antigua, the loss of a French Sloop, counterfeit coinage in Boston, and a calling to muster of a local militia in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It really is remarkable to read these older newspapers, though some knowledge of older forms of English is necessary.

This expansion of the archives could see newspapers complaining more about Google profiting off of their content. They may be providing a public service by archiving the newspapers, but Google still makes money from AdSense clicks, with contextual advertisements served to readers as they browse the archived newspapers. As much of the content is quite old, however, newspapers may simply view the archive as a helpful research tool for historians as well as journalists.