The archive went live on June 6, 2006, after Google acquired PaperofRecord.com, originally created by Robert J. Huggins and his team at Cold North Wind, Inc.

[citation needed] In 2011, Google announced that it would no longer add content to the archive project.

[2] On August 14, 2011, without notice, Google made the News Archives home page unavailable.

[3] Carly Carlioi, an editor at the Boston Phoenix, speculated that Google discontinued the project because they found it harder than expected, for newspapers were more difficult to index than books because of layout complexities.

For instance, the archives of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel disappeared on August 16, 2016, due to a contract between the paper's owner, the Gannett Company, and NewsBank.