In race against fake news, Google and Facebook stroll to starting line

Google and Facebook have been in something of a no-win situation in recent months

Google and Facebook have been taking steps to curb the number of false news articles propagated across their sites. This week, the Silicon Valley companies showed that they were still in the early stages of their battle to limit misinformation online.

In a blog post, Google said it had permanently banned nearly 200 publishers from its AdSense advertising network near the end of last year, after putting into effect a policy in November to choke off websites that try to deceive users from its online ad service.

On the same day, Facebook introduced changes to its Trending Topics feature — a part