Google’s I/O event today began with Sundar Pichai introducing the world to a “REIMAGINED” Google News which will offer “Deeper Insights and Fuller Perspective”. As reported earlier, Google was set to revamp News and at the event it affirmed that Google considers “quality journalism” its responsibility and intends on investing 300 million dollar in the…
Google’s I/O event today began with Sundar Pichai introducing the world to a “REIMAGINED” Google News which will offer “ Deeper Insights and Fuller Perspective ”. As reported earlier, Google was set to revamp News and at the event it affirmed that Google considers “quality journalism” its responsibility and intends on investing 300 million dollar in the next 3 years to partner with and help improve the news industry. This new version of Google news will be available on Android, iOS and web, starting today.
Google News will switch to the new Google Material Theme and has been made easier and faster to use. Now as a default, Google news will show the Top 5 stories relevant to the user; In addition it will also show more stories about local events and news in your area. This new Google news feed will use reinforcement learning to learn from a user’s behavior and usage patterns; and so as Google put it ‘ the more you use it, the better it gets ’.
There will be a separate tab “Headlines”, which will allow users to see what the rest of the world is reading and it will also fetch the latest videos from YouTube and other sources. “Newscasts” will give users a quick preview of the story to make them understand the gist of it and also discover new information.
Perhaps the most interesting new feature to be added was “Full coverage”. It seemed like in the light of the recent controversies surrounding Facebook, Google really wanted to set its priorities right by committing to providing access to “ same, unfiltered information for everyone ”. Under this feature, Google news lines up all different perspectives around a story into a chronological timeline coupled with related tweets, opinions, analyses, and more. The amalgamation of all these factors will offer an in-depth outlook for a news story to the readers.
Google also announced an overhauled “Newsstand” feature, which will allow the users to read, follow and subscribe to popular subscriptions using their Google account. Also, in an industry first, this “Subscribe with Google” feature will let you access that publisher’s work across Google search, Google news and even the publishers own website.
Google really seems to be taking Google News very seriously as evident from its massive announcement to launch in 127 countries, starting today. We sure are excited to check these new features out. Let us know of your opinions about the new features in comments below.
