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Google To Add 'News Feed' To Website and App (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Google is adding a personalised Facebook-style news feed to its homepage -- Google.com -- to show users content they may be interested in before they search. It will display news stories, features, videos and music chosen on the basis of previous searches by the same user. Users will also be able to click a "follow" button on search results to add topics of interest to their feed. One analyst said the move would help Google compete with rivals. "Google has a strong incentive to make search as useful as possible," said Mattia Littunen, a senior research analyst at Enders Analysis. "Facebook's news feed is one of its main rivals. It is competing with other ways of accessing content."
Nice that adblockers knock that garbage out. Drudge, Google and others...(I keep /. white listed though).
They get rid of the personalised configurable homepage system that everybody loved, and now they're making a half-arsed automatic version on the nice clean google.com front page?
Is it April fools already? I could have sworn it was only July just yesterday.
I guess it's past time to switch to duck duck go
>>It will display news stories, features, videos and music chosen on the basis of previous searches by the same user.
Why do I get a sneaking suspicion that this is less of a "News *I* want to see" and more of a "News *WE* want you to see" type of thing like Facebook does. Seriously, I just want to search for something, not have the tainted news of the day foisted on me with whatever bias Google sees fit. Thank god for adblockers...
This is a great idea. Maybe they could organize their 'follow' system using an existing syndication technology, say, RSS, which is already widely supported by many web sites. That way, users could subscribe to sites and have stories and other items just show up in their feed. They can then read the stories at their leisure. Google could call it something like 'Google Reader'.
This is a nice effort. But it doesn't go far enough. Google, can't you please just tell me what I'm supposed to be interested in, and direct my browser to that page without any unnecessary effort or thinking on my part? Thanks!
P.S., dear Google, make Google Glass only show me what I am supposed to see. After all: Hear no evil, See no evil, Tweet no evil! Don't be evil now.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
can you believe it? two scoops! everyone else only had one
then he tweeted a tweet and deleted it later omfg
Google just added the same feed thing in the Search app on Android and without the same option to turn Feed off like you could with the Now cards... Seems like Now was merged with Feed also. SAD!
But Google decided they wanted to be Facebook 2.0: Total Information Awareness Consumer, and drive everyone through their Google+ interface; even if that meant blowing away their existing personalized home page. So, FU google.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Where have we seen this before?
Google originally gained share because they didn't have all the altavista or yahoo crap cluttering up the page.
It was nice while it lasted.
Maybe this is Google's New Coke moment, where they can just accept the awesomeness of their own industry domination and instead have to find a reason to reinvent their wheel. This will go down VERY very badly and I can't wait to see it.
Nixie Pixel, Linux and FOSS vlogger, returns to YouTube!
For quite some time now Linux and FOSS vlogger Nixie Pixel, has been bringing videos about Linux, FOSS, and more to many a thirsty geek. Finally, after a mysterious absence of one year, the vlog darling returns to YouTube.
If you're not familiar with her, she has two channels on YouTube:
NixieDoesLinux, and "NixiePixel.
There is some WTF in that Google is turning its back on one of the most ironic and clean home page designs that differentiated it from AltaVista/MSN/Yahoo/Lycos, which all had/have the "visual clutter" knob turned to 11.
When I'm on someone else's computer (i.e. repairing), I type google.com into the search bar to be sure I don't get Yahoo/Bing/etc.
I'll probably just create a clean white web page with a Google logo and search bar and just give it a short URL - just have it submit the form to Google.
it's dead
If you show your own services BEFORE somebody does a search you're not abusing your position as a search engine. It's a clever workaround.
Suddenly they want to be more like Yahoo? Not sure what Bing does. Is Altavista still around?
I like my search like I like my coffee, nothing fancy. If I want news courtesy of Google, I'll go to news.google.com and get it there. If I want slow loading, bad search results wrapped in click bait headlines and animated advertisements - no... wait, I don't want that which is why I use* Google.
* used
Hello Duck Duck Go, my new** friend.
** old
This is literally what killed Yahoo, when they switched from a simple and clean search interface into being a media portal. Google became king BECAUSE they didn't have all this shit on their homepage, and everyone shifted from Yahoo to Google because of it.
Maybe this will be the surge that DuckDuckGo needs to become more prominent. If only they had a simpler name...
Just one more thing trying to distract you from your original task.
Since it seems Google is quickly trying to destroy itself, what search engine does everyone suggest as an alternative? I've heard decent things about Duck Duck Go, but I've never used it myself.
If I go to www.google.com, I want a lean fast-loading page with no other crap than the Google logo or Doodle. It's already taking forever to load compared to 5 years ago or so. When I want the other stuff, I go to news.google.com (well in my case, .ca in both situations). Google needs to get through their thick heads why people liked Google in the first place. And now they want to copy Yahoo! -- we all know what happened to them. Bad idea...
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
Just bring back iGoogle. And Google Reader.
Google+ is defunct garbage and this sounds ridiculous too.
It's a bit late for the April fools jokes.
With search suggestions and this... they don't want you to have to search for anyhing... they want to show you their stream....
... news. It's not news if I select it. It's only news if it's NEW and I haven't heard about it before. I read a lot of news, and I always do it anonymously. It's bad enough that the source creates a filter on what "new" means. The LAST thing I want is my destination to further filter that. What a terrible idea. Google doesn't understand what news is, why I read the news, or what I would consider new. Broken concept.
I rarely even see the home page anymore. The vast majority of my queries are spoken to the assistant or typed on an address bar if I happen to be on the PC. My news and stock updates generally come from the personalized feed in the assistant and have for some time.
The reason this is likely happening is that they are cutting investment in the older technology and spreading the tech from the assistant in its place. Look at it as a step in the planned obsolescense process. The feature is not new.
Back when dial up was the thing did you want to open a search page to find something or did you want to wait a minute for yahoo to pull up a full page of shit then try to find whatever it was?
The thing is I actually liked yahoo's search better but it was just too slow to open.
Sure for the most part connections are way faster today than they were back then but I don't want a bunch of crap cluttering up the search page.
They are slowly hiding features that made them great and adding features people don't like nor want.
The cached page view is GONE from many devices (unless javascript is disabled) and i've noticed some pages will have 3 text ads before the search result now instead of the usual two.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!