I don't think this is new. I wrote about it in June (googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007 ...). It's also one of the default gadgets.

Ah, thanks. Never trust an official Google blog :)

[Updated the end of the post + I now changed the post's title from "New Google News Gadget" to "Google News Gadget".]

My emphasis in what they wrote:

<<Monday, October 29, 2007 1:46 PM
Posted by Kevin Liu, Jin-Ho Kim, Jaeho Kang, Software Engineers

Lots of people love small, portable, sexy gadgets, and that's exactly *what we've just created*. We're not talking hardware, of course – what we're *introducing* is the iGoogle News gadget.>>

There's also a Google News widget for Blogger blogs, which allows you to choose a keyword, and cycles through a series of relevant headlines.

Google has a funny idea about the definition of "introducing".

They have also just introduces Google News for facebook: apps.facebook.com/googlenews/

Don't know if you have seen?