Google has brought back the ability to search the news archive this weekend.

Google News representative, Stacie, announced this quietly in a Google News Help thread:

The feature went away over time, starting around August 2011 when Google dropped the home page for the Google News archive. The ability to search it completely went offline not too long after.

Now, Google has brought it back via the search tools filter. Here is how to use it:

Oh, today would be the 19th anniversary of the day AltaVista launched, which is why I used them as an example here.

Forum discussion at Google News Help.