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Google To Add 'News Feed' To Website and App (bbc.com)

Posted by msmash on from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.

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."

28 of 48 comments (clear)

  1. Not on my computer by p51d007 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Nice that adblockers knock that garbage out. Drudge, Google and others...(I keep /. white listed though).

    1. Re:Not on my computer by parodyca · · Score: 1

      Great. Just what I need. Porn in my newsfeed.

    2. Re:Not on my computer by unixisc · · Score: 1

      Nice that adblockers knock that garbage out. Drudge, Google and others...(I keep /. white listed though).

      That's the point. I actually hate all 3 - Google, Apple & Microsoft - forcefeeding us news from their favorite sources - be it the Guardian (why is that relevant to the US? And if them, why not RT or JPost?) or NYT or WPost! Let me pick what I wanna read - be it someone's WordPress feed or someone's website, do an RSS on that, and let me take over.

      These guys trying to be media companies - we already see that w/ Comcast and NBC, and Amazon and Washington Post. I'm not interested in what these companies have, so let me choose!

  2. What are they doing?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    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?

    1. Re:What are they doing?? by randomErr · · Score: 1

      They've done it before. I think it was called Google Start. You could pick from a set of widgets or put an on a windows to use another website. Back then though it was optional,

      I honestly think they've forced out so much of the old guard has left that they've forgotten their history.

      --
      You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
    2. Re:What are they doing?? by bickerdyke · · Score: 1

      And they used to have Google Reader for News.

      And they will have used to have a nice, clean distraction free start page.

      --
      bickerdyke
  3. Uh Huh... by Tempest_2084 · · Score: 1

    >>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...

  4. Deja vu by imidan · · Score: 4, Funny

    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'.

    1. Re:Deja vu by omnichad · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Nah, they should let you pick some favorite feeds and let you put it on your home page with other widgets like weather and news. They could call it iGoogle.

    2. Re:Deja vu by srichard25 · · Score: 1

      They don't want you to pick your own news. They want to TELL you what news you care about. Have to protect you from all that "fake news" out there, right?

  5. A step in the right direction by DickBreath · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.
    1. Re:A step in the right direction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Amen, Brother!

      If it wasn't for Eve tricking Adam into eating fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, there would be NO Original Sin. In other words, if humankind had remained ignorant, like the coloreds in Africa, we would we welcome in the Garden of Eden.

      What we must do is give ourselves lobotomies and mate with as many coloreds as possible so that we can reduce ourselves to the most ignorant and stupid state possible. Only then can we be one with God.

  6. We need to tell you about DRUMPF AND HIS 2 SCOOPS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    can you believe it? two scoops! everyone else only had one

    then he tweeted a tweet and deleted it later omfg

  7. They already had a great solution... by GodfatherofSoul · · Score: 1

    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!
  8. The altavistafication begins! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    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.

  9. Started to care, but then I realized it's a no-op by enjar · · Score: 2
    I use google all the time for searches, but very rarely do I visit the search/home page. Most of the time I'm doing searches just by typing them into Chrome. It seems that they are just replicating the google assistant stuff on the homepage. I've already bought into it so .... meh. The vast majority of times I end up at google it's on some other machine where I don't sign into the google account, anyway.

    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.

  10. Re:Started to care, but then I realized it's a no- by omnichad · · Score: 2

    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.

  11. Yeah, who? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    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

    1. Re:Yeah, who? by eedwardsjr · · Score: 1

      you can turn it off. It is a configurable option.

  12. Literally what killed Yahoo by darkain · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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...

  13. What Search Engine To Use Now? by Tempest_2084 · · Score: 1

    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.

  14. www and news by CanEHdian · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:www and news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      But who goes to www.google.com anymore? Except maybe to see fun doodles? Every web browser lets you search directly from the address bar so...

    2. Re:www and news by antdude · · Score: 1

      I want the old news.google.com format back! I used to be able to sort from newest to oldest too. :(

      --
      Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
  15. Bit late by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 1

    It's a bit late for the April fools jokes.

  16. Re:Personalized isn't... by RhettLivingston · · Score: 1

    And if you don't give it the chance to learn, it never will understand. I've given permission to Google to use all of my data, and I regularly upgrade / downgrade news sources to further inform it. Over the past few months, the assistant has gotten quite a lot better at picking the tech news I would have normally picked and now often surprises me by finding something of interest I had missed. Eventually, it will be able to do this and even distill the articles down to the facts it knows I'd like. I'm looking forward to that day.

  17. who still sees the Google home page? by RhettLivingston · · Score: 1

    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.

  18. That was why I switched to google from yahoo. by sims+2 · · Score: 1

    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!