Google News topic url decoder

The tool extracts the entity-id from a Google News topic-url.

how to use

  1. copy & paste a Google News topics-url to the input field
  2. press "decode"
  3. enjoy

background

Google News, like many Google properties nowadays, relies on entities. One place where this can be observed is the /topics/-url which contains the entity id.

technical stuff

Google is using two standards for encoding the data. One is base64 (url-safe variant) which is a very well known binary to text encoding scheme. The other is protocol buffers a not so well known alternative to json. Google is using protocol buffers in a lot of places. Protocol buffers is something technical readers of this page might want to look into.

In the input field above you can insert a Google News-URL containing the topics-path. The tool then extracts the value and decodes it. There are some limitation since the whole process was reverse engineered. Do not hestitate to contact me if you have a question or encounter a bug.

feedback welcome

If you like this tool, experience any problems, have ideas for upgrades or just want to say hi, feel free to contact me on Mastodon @VorticonCmdr.