Three years ago Google set out to scan every newspaper everywhere, ever. After “3.5 million issues of more than 2000 newspaper titles worldwide,” they’re scrapping the project. The news archive will still exist, just not with any new items. It’s a bit of a surprising step back for Google and it certainly goes against the grand plan of indexing all world knowledge. But after Google News Archives launched, one tended not to hear much about it. It was more a curiosity than a resource. I guess Google just wants to work on other more pressing things, like waggling your phone in front of a reader at a cash register.