Opinion: Google Unleashes Terrible New Update For Google News Upon the Net 381
Rei shares their opinion of Google's redesign of Google News: Google unveiled a "new look" for Google News, describing it as a "clean and uncluttered look." New design features include a mostly empty "In the News" box for trending-topics, most of which you probably don't care about; a double-height page header so that they can make the border around the search box inexplicably larger and add a four-option menu bar; large empty grey expanses that take up half the browser; and a new news section that presents half as many news articles per page. If you didn't think you were having to scroll enough when using Google News, don't worry -- Google's got your back with this new update. It's safe to say that Slashdot reader Rei is not so fond of the Google News redesign. Have you had the chance to view it yourself? What do you think of the Google News facelift?
Dreadful. (Score:5, Funny)
Well, now we know where the user experience experts that invented the ribbon went after they were fired from Microsoft.
They were fired, weren't they?
Re:Dreadful. (Score:5, Funny)
Who cares about ribbon's....
I want my paper clip back! He was my only friend...
Almost as bad as the news section being all wapo (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm more worried about the content of Google news than the presentation, honestly.
The health section in particular has been full of complete nonsense. I've been seeing spam for viagra and weed lately. I'll know they've hit rock bottom when homeopathy pops up.
Re:Almost as bad as the news section being all wap (Score:5, Insightful)
Mine was already full of Goop stones and warnings not to put wasps in vaginas. The health section has been spammy shit-show for years, but the headlines were higher quality.
The thing is, the headline news quality has gone way down lately too. It used to be full of hard news, now it is over 50% misleading clickbait crap, even when it looks like it will be hard news.
The one thing it had going for it was the quality interface that gave access to a large enough quantity of data so that a person could eventually find all the news they wanted. The redesign substantially reduces the data quantity, with no changes at all that would increase quality.
I don't want a biased feed that will give me the "real" news, or the news important to virtuous people, I just want the mainstream horseshit in a single straightforwards pile so that I can learn what is being said and triangulate a few truths if I care.
Feed wanted.
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All that said, and besides the main stories everyb
Re:Almost as bad as the news section being all wap (Score:5, Interesting)
The news biz is failing, and their jobs drying up, so journalism degrees are becoming worthless.
Our economic and business system is increasingly shooting itself in the foot - perhaps I should say cutting its own throat. We are told about the marvellous benefits of free-enterprise, free-market capitalism and the competition it engenders. Unfortunately, capitalists and entrepreneurs hate competition and do their level best to eliminate it: Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Twitter are all exemplars of the trend.
As regards journalism, smaller companies have been bought up or driven out of business, with most of the media notoriously falling into the hands of six corporations. http://www.morriscreative.com/... [morriscreative.com] And those huge corporations have very definite opinions about what news and view they want people to read. (Many of them are heavily involved with the federal government, so they act more like echo chambers than critical reporters).
At the same time, vested interests are seeding the media with 'techniques of persuasion', i.e., propaganda.
I find it hard to agree that this is a new problem, because vested interests have been doing this since the dawn of recorded history. (Indeed, one could probably find prehistoric cave art that basically says, "Zog is a mastodon's arse" or "Zog for War Leader!")
The remedy is well known and simple. Education, intelligent choice, and critical faculties.
"Gentlemen, you are now about to embark on a course of studies which will occupy you for two years. Together, they form a noble adventure. But I would like to remind you of an important point. Nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you in after life, save only this, that if you work hard and intelligently you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole, purpose of education".
- John Alexander Smith, Professor of Moral Philosophy, Oxford University, 1914.
Even with vast masses of garbage, cant and downright lies smeared across the Web, intelligent and astute readers should be able to find a small subset of sources that are usually accurate, or at least try hard to be. I know I have.
It's no shock then that journalistic standards are plummeting. Honesty and integrity in the news are getting harder to find.
One has to take into account what the vested interests are, what kind of information they wish to distort or conceal, and how much they are willing to pay. It's often said that Wikipedia is not a reliable source; but I have found it admirable for topics such as history, mathematics, and science. It's only when the subject becomes controversial - politics, religion, celebrities, sport, etc. - that money is applied and disinformation created. The same is broadly true of the mainstream media. I plan to watch Wimbledon on BBC TV, and I am not worried that Andy Murray's scores will be exaggerated or his opponents slandered. Most of the MSM's output is reasonably unbiased, but there are hot spots such as international politics.
I find plenty of honesty and integrity, but I have had to seek it out. Some journalists and organizations always seem consistent, rarely contradict themselves or each other, and never say anything I personally know to be untrue. Ralph Nader; John Pilger; Seymour Hersh; Paul Craig Roberts; Robert Parry; Gilbert Doctorow; Brian Cloughley; The Saker; Gareth Porter; Glenn Greenwald; Noam Chomsky; Andrew Napolitano; Robert Fisk; to a degree, anyone called Cockburn; Dave Lindorff; Fred Reed; Kevin Jack Perry; Ellen Brown... the list goes on and on and on.
If anyone is interested, try Counterpunch as a start. Maybe half of the material is thin, dubious or sometimes even cranky. Never mind; as Theodore Sturgeon said, 90 percent of everything is crap - so fifty-fift
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I can just picture a UX twat screaming "Clutter! Clutter! All they want is clutter!" and storming out of the room.
Re:Almost as bad as the news section being all wap (Score:4, Interesting)
I gave up on Google news when they started serving up advertising fluff pieces as important news alerts. Now the worst thing about Google news it is a real bitch to clean off once you have installed, it most definitely does not die with a couple of clicks. Google have very much become shallow advertising driven arse holes and not to be trusted. They did some fine marketing with feel good research crap but it was just a charade to hide extreme corporate greed. Still not as bad as M$, no major corporate player (prying into peoples medical records via small business medical practices) is quite that bad but Google has managed to out evil Apple by quite a bit.
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Yeah, I barely look any more, but it's still (marginally) better than loading up a regular news site and having everything split over 20 pages.
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But...but...didn't you learn in school that "the medium is the message"?
No, I never really knew what it meant, either.
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The point behind the McCluhan slogan "The Medium is the Message" is the idea that different media have characteristics that dominate the experience of using them, and the idea that they're something like neutral conduits of information is simply wrong.
In the present context, I might make the point that there's something about all the swiping and zooming of a mobile phone interface that seems to have an addictive appeal to the chimp brains out there; and those of us who look at the web using devices that
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In my effort to eliminate garbage like that I discovered that Google News only allows a maximum of 100 blocked misinfotainment sites.
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> You do know that google customizes the story selection to the user, based on the interests they've already exhibited, right?
> I read google news with cookies blocked and I don't get any of that whacko stuff.
Yes. Firefox doesn't allow most cookies and deletes the rest every time I close it (i.e. many times a day). I don't browse while logged into Google, either.
So yes, they should be giving me the non-personalized version.
Re:Epic Self-Own (Score:5, Funny)
Firefox doesn't allow most cookies and deletes the rest every time I close it (i.e. many times a day).
Yeah, it crashes a lot for me too.
Re:Epic Self-Own (Score:5, Insightful)
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Seems to be getting worse (Score:5, Insightful)
Just re-looked at it and noticed when I drag my cursor into a subject frame all the links brighten, very disconcerting.
The other point I would like to point out is the new format removed snippets of the stories from the article blocks so you cant tell whether it really is something you want to read or not. Now (to me) it scans like a wall of clickbait.
Meh.
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Just like cnn.com and foxnews.com.
Easy fix (Score:2)
BRING BACK MARISSA! She's gonna data-design and a/b test those pixels like a pro.
I heard she's available, and much wealthier than when she left Google.
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Re:Dreadful. (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you had the chance to view it yourself? What do you think of the Google News facelift?
The new Google News page is total and utter crap. For a minute I actually thought someone had hijacked and defaced the site or something. Then I realized it was a redesign. You can't find anything in there. I mean I searched for some recent major world news item that I heard about and it was nowhere to be found. I guess they hadn't rebuild the index yet even. The design is full of useless borders and cruft which is totally against Google's own minimalist website design philosophy. And everything is freaking huge. I feel like my desktop screen is the size of a phablet. Looks like one of them "mobile optimized" sites. Blech.
Re:Dreadful. (Score:5, Interesting)
This article in The Rogister is probably pertinent:
Kill Google AMP before it KILLS the web
https://www.theregister.co.uk/... [theregister.co.uk]
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broken like Windows "Modern Interface" (Score:2)
it's now Idiot Valley. looks like a 1970 college tabloid.
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Every smart person at Google has tenure, so if you don't like it, then fuck you :)
Yeah... (Score:3)
Re:Yeah... (Score:4, Funny)
That's why this version is going to be called Rosebud.
Horrible waste of space (Score:5, Insightful)
Information density is very low. It wastes lots of space, presents less information, fewer links and what remains is spread over multiple URLs (for example, one has to click on "Local" to see local news).
Horrible.
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Welcome to Responsive Web Design 101.
It's not my favorite paradigm either... I'm really hoping the next design fad comes along asap.
Re:Horrible waste of space (Score:4, Insightful)
Web design fads are a paradigm a dozen.
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" I'm really hoping the next design fad comes along asap."
Amen Brother!!! And let's hope it includes using higher contrast colors. I'm really tired of light-blue and/or light-gray on white. Can't imagine why anyone thinks that's an appropriate way to present content..
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Unfortunately the vast majority of "responsive" sites are exactly like that. My boss asked me recently to make a site more responsive by hardcoding pixel widths in to all the elements. I had to explain to him that not only was that the opposite of responsive, the particular pixel widths he asked for made it too wide for the company issued cell phones, but only fill half the with of the screen on company issued laptops. Making it basically unusable on both.
Re:Horrible waste of space (Score:4, Insightful)
Information density is very low. It wastes lots of space, presents less information, fewer links and what remains is spread over multiple URLs (for example, one has to click on "Local" to see local news).
Horrible.
Its also distracting with the different font size levels scattered about. I just want a headline and the source to the right of it, not below. And more, not fewer, headlines on each topic as was before.
Horrible^2.
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Agree on all points. I do think that some people might like it, but they made a mistake not giving the users the option to use it or not. I personally think it's really bad and that big waste of screen real estate across the top just pisses me off -- it's outright disrespectful of users.
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They managed to make it worst than msn.com. That takes commitment.
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If you want the old format -- just enter your news-search term in the regular search box and then click on "news" from the menu that appears on the standard search result page. This delivers the news in the old-format with the tools such as sorting, time-period etc.
They broke the back button (Score:5, Insightful)
Not a fan of the new format either, but I usually give myself a week or so to get used to it before voicing an opinion on these things.
Lower information density ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Crap. Really crap. Think I'll stick with Reuters, CBC, and The Guardian - on my phone. It's pretty bad when a phone screen has a higher information density than a full-sized page.
Re:Lower information density ... (Score:5, Informative)
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And just like me, you had to go to the blog to do a comparison because you never had occasion to look at Google News before today's Google metanews, right?
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Yeah CBC, they know how to do a website....
- HTTPS uses an invalid certificate
- the same device (my phone) picks up either the mobile or desktop version of the site on alternating page loads, you can never guess which.
- the one page has about 5 or 6 links to the same story with different headlines in different places on the page. Meaning that you have to scroll through a page that's about 4 times longer than it needs to be for the amount of content they have.
- forgets my city selection about 20% of the time
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I'd say "what were they thinking", but after "material design", it's been established that usability takes a back seat.
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Usability and clarity should take precedence. Color schemes - not enough contrast. On-off sliders instead of checkboxes - major fail because they take up more room and it's not apparent if they're "on" or "off" at a glance. Gestures and swipes for too many things - not as easily user-discoverable, and they f*ck up.
It's crap. If Microsoft had done this, they would have been justifiably pilloried for it.
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They love to kill products, first they mangle them, then they kill them. Remember Google Reader?
Following the trend (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Following the trend (Score:5, Insightful)
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their their
Yes it's awful. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, I agree the new layout is awful. And not just in a retro-grouch "I don't like change" manner.
I have been realizing that "UX bros" are ruining computing for everyone. Computers have been turning into glorified toasters a little bit at a time, focused towards a single, minimal-click purpose, with any other usage sent to the trash. The new news site is another example.
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The new Google News layout is woeful. That said, I wouldn't have a clue how it used to look because I've never used Google News.
I saw something similar to its current look on YouTube last night when my browser cookies expired. Thankfully the old look was restored when I logged in.
The desktop web is being reduced to the lowest common denominator experience - fit only for mobiles and tablets.
Hmmm (Score:2)
You know... That layout looks an awful lot like the layout for this site.
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Not for me. But my settings make /. look like it did 10 years ago.
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Not really. At least this site gives more than just the headline without having to click on the bait. The new design is perfect if you're trying to force people to click through to even see if it's something they should care about. So of course, if you do click through, all the google ads on the site get their view count increased.
In other words, the new layout is designed to increase ad views.
When has google released a good update to the web? (Score:2)
Unusable (Score:2)
Completely unusable, so long Google news, may check again in a few weeks. Moving to Reddit News (of all places) https://www.reddit.com/r/news/ [reddit.com]
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Agree. Sent them feedback immediately on the first ambush by this new horror. Far fewer customizations, insistence on presenting pictures which are sometimes relevant to the headlines. I mainly use my customized feedly account, but now I'll give reddit a try. The only worse news layouts would be Bing / MSN. If I truly wanted odd and irrelevant stuff shoved at my eyes, I'd be hanging out on StumbleUpon - which could happen if I'm truly bored. That hasn't happened since last November.
Yes, my standard
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As one of the sites I visit more than 6 times a day, this is now off my list entirely.
No, I'm not going to reddit: frankly the other news sites I use will have to do.
The OLD one was my favorite aggregator. I now have no aggregator at all. Better?
It sucks (Score:2)
Re:It sucks (Score:5, Informative)
The new layout benefits google, not you. By showing only the headline without the first few sentences as a summary, you have to click through to see the article to know if you even give a damn. That increases total ad views.
If you needed a reminder that you're the product, here you go.
What were they thinking? (Score:2)
Supposed to be more configurable, except for getting rid of the all-new cruft. No way to see double-columns (twice the info density). No more 2-3 line summaries under headlines. Defaults to show "extended" information when you click a headline, and always shows the extended pane on the top headline no matter what. If you choose auto-refresh, and the top headline that you just closed hasn't changed, it's reopened.
User friendly? Nope, user contemptible, maybe, or user vicious. I guess the A-team was busy els
I like it (Score:2)
As a sushi platter of mainstream media news I'd rather it look more smooth and spacey than add to the agitation of the hysteric headlines.
These days I don't visit it nearly as often as before, I have to say Slashdot now covers most of my news needs.
How bad to you have to be... (Score:2)
That Slashdot posts a story about the UI change on a news site. That said, it is awful. I went to the "blog" about the change to comment on how ugly it was, but the "blog" doesn't have a comment section -- just an explanation of why this is such a good change. Slashdot has changed over they years, sometimes I didn't like the new look, but they were usually minor changes that grew on me -- apart from the god-awful moderation changes they tried to force (I set my account to classic, has that rework been w
Thanks for this article. (Score:2)
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Will they listen? I don't know. Last time they screwed up News this badly (2011), they eventually listened to the angry people (including me) and added enough features back to make it as useful as the previous version. And the reaction on their product support forums [google.com] has been next-to uniformly negative, just like last time.
On the other hand, the fact that they did this without noticing they were making the same mistake as last time, without an extended period of a/b testing, makes me wonder if they're to
matches the content (Score:5, Insightful)
I find the new layout a perfect reflection of the typical content on Google News: dumbed-down and low information density.
Whitespace does not convey information (Score:2)
I have limited screen space. I want to see as much information as possible, clearly delinated, at a glance. Just like I don't like long pointless monologues and soliloquys with little informational content, I also don't like long low-content pages. It has a low signal to noise ratio.
Empty space delineates but it's a lazy way to do it and at odds with the fact I have limited screen space and want to slurp up as much info as possible with each glance. Of course there is the opposite extreme, but I would hap
Almost as bad (Score:2)
Almost as bad as Slashdot's current interface. Nothing appeals to me, nothing offends. It's like sailing on a sea of vanilla ice cream on an overcast day.
Single line (Score:2)
Seems like none of these web page designers can figure it out.
Want to present an overview that will draw your users in? Represent each item with a SINGLE LINE of TEXT. Slashdot, Fark, Google News, not a single site can figure it out.
After that, hover or click on more, or whatever. But you can't beat that old tried and true one line per subject interface.
I want to downgrade (Score:2)
I agree with Rei. The "In The News" should be optional; it's a waste of space.
The Local pane on the right has the wrong location and can't be changed. At the moment, there is no way to change what Local really should be.
Setting the Language/Locael should be in settings, not on a menu bar.
And everything on the right side should be optional.
I hope the start revving soon.
Looking at their app reviews (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure "What the hell, Google?" is a meme now.
a ten-minute investment in user script (Score:4, Interesting)
In Firefox, this reduced the clutter to manageable levels:
.X20oP, .fkWPz, .FOvasf, .cZgiac, .JHzJp {
@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);
@-moz-document domain("news.google.com") {
img,
display : none !important;
}
}
Google probably scrambles those class selectors, so we'll see what happens tomorrow.
It appears that many "related" items are repetitions (boo hiss) and where there isn't a related item, I was getting links to some horrible detox service.
I've previously searched on both pseudoxanthoma elasticum and adrenoleukodystrophy. Fortunately, I don't have both. That would make it very hard to hack user script to repair the effects of usranathema adrenocarddystrophy.
SUCKS (Score:2)
Uncluttered = less information
Basically, they took out the variant stories, leaving only their 'main' one, increased font size, put lager, annoying, pictures on what is basically an Index, and put silly squares all over the space, taking up sapce.
Ever had a positive opinion of change? (Score:2)
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I thought I was seeing the mobile site by mistake (Score:4, Insightful)
I thought I was seeing the mobile site by mistake. The new layout is from Satan who is the Devil. Information density is down by about 70%. All I see is white space (Gray space?) with a single column of news articles down the center. The old layout was far more usable for me.
There is always bing news (Score:2)
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You know...you are actually right!
Maybe it is not as "information dense" as the old Google News design (on what Google used to call "comfortable" setting, IIRC) and it's not as customizable (no news sources, weighing and such) but it is actually quite usable.
A plus in my book with Bing News is that they are not as insistent of you being logged in everywhere, all the time as Google is. (ie. I can still get very serviceable news aggregator site with some customization even in logged off state)
Should Have Used Slashdot's Design... (Score:2)
...circa 4.1.06.
Clean? (Score:2)
>Google[..] describing it as a "clean and uncluttered look."
"Clean?" Yeah, like that is somehow good. I hate Google's interfaces probably more than anything out there (I suppose Apple's is about the same).
Clean = No functionality, choices, settings, or real customizations. Freaking hidden everything. Unintuitive navigation. Things that fade in and out when you try to read them or use them. Controls and icons that make no sense. Tons of wasted space. Replace the "Clean" description with "frustrat
It's horrible, can't make URLs for sections (Score:2)
It's horrible. I would actually put up with the "look" part of it, if I could still get the FUNCTIONALITY part, which I can't.
I want to have a set of tabs that I can click on to open various sections I care about in tabs.. e.g. main news, technology, entertainment, etc.
I can't do that anymore. I even tried manually clicking on the section and saving the URL (the URL _does_ seem to change, to show the section info in it).. But trying to go to that URL still brings up the main section.
I changed from Yahoo n
Crap (Score:2)
Yes, this IS crap.
What I want from google is information and minimal html/css crap. This is html/css crap with minimal information,
My employer provides me with an iPhone and I sometimes read news on it when I am not yelling at Siri. news.google.com got an 'upgrade' a month or so ago such that the 'headlines' stuff scrolls horizontally while the rest of the site is vertical. On one hand, this makes it easier for me to ignore the headlines, but mostly it makes my brain hurt.
Why is google all of a sudden ma
I hate it (Score:2)
Google News and Weather Underground are my top two sites for general information.
Long ago Wunderground did their "web 2.0" redesign but retained the (much better) classic design at classic.wunderground.com... until they finally axed that in 2015. Now I don't really have a good one page fits all weather site anymore. I was thinking about just writing my own.
Now, Google News was a treasure trove of all the most important stories of the day, with the ability to turn off entertainment (kardashia
I hope these designers never work in tech again. (Score:2, Insightful)
The entire staff responsible for this should be fired.
Gone are the the article intro's or summaries. I feel forced to select sources, instead of getting a mix of counter points and different perspectives to gain a better picture and understanding of events in the news.
With this format I see less News, it doesn't expand my view into things I am not seeking. It does not promote learning or discovery of other things in the world.
Its has significantly less information and less variety of news being reported.
It
web design fail (Score:2)
Abominable (Score:2)
Dear heavens - I may have to try Bing News again.... :-(
"Clean and uncluttered" is synonym for dumbed down (Score:3)
and it is the reason I escaped from Google+. Many of my friends did, too. But I guess they got new users? I am not sure, it may work - I do believe we're going full idiocracy, and Google may have sensed the trend better than I thought.
But it's not for me.
Made me use Bing, ffs (Score:5, Interesting)
The new design is beyond awful. I have been using Google News as my browser home page for years because it was a quick way to get an overview of headlines and blurbs I cared about, and this update completely ruins the usability.
Before, I could see 10+ stories, with a snippet for a few of them. Now, I can see at most 1.5 due to the bigger pictures and irrelevant "Related Coverage" and "More About" parts. Sometimes I can't even see the whole article card because Related and More take up so much space.
I just want a small picture or icon, headline, and 1-2 sentences from the article. That way I can get a rather complete 10+ article overview in a single page without clicking or scrolling, and even from multiple sections. Before, I could see Sci/Tech and World headlines on the same page as Top Stories. Now, I have to hit Page Down twice to get to just the first such story.
So yeah, they've lost a user who had Google News as default home page for a decade. Maybe if they add serious streamlining and compact modes, I'll return. But for now, https://www.bing.com/news [bing.com] is oddly enough a clean replacement. Google pushed me to use Bing ...
Similar? (Score:3)
Dear Google (Score:3)
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That makes two of us. Also a user of DDG.
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It's not perfect, but it could be a lot worse.
True. But you know what? It was better.
All they had to do was nothing.
They can't afford to do nothing, they have 57,000 employees that need something to do.
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