Leave a Review Google News
Better than it began, but still needs improvement
After getting sick of Apple New and it’s “curated” content and weird organization scheme I’ve been giving Gnews another look. Including local news is a neat feature, but doesn’t work when you present yesterday’s weather and traffic. The Thumbs Up/Down is a nice idea, but I don’t really see much change in my content tbh. Some of the content served up is a head scratcher - articles on the opposite end of the political spectrum or things that have some relation to my location, but not really to my actual interests. My biggest complaint is the repetitive content and the glut of two bit and garbage “news” outlets and blogs. I don’t need 10 articles telling me the same thing over and over and over again. Clean up your feed, focus on legit blogs and outlets, adjust to user feedback more quickly, remove irrelevant articles (old sales, weather & traffic), and this app will be a winner.
Original review from years ago: This replaced Google Currents, and has been a disappointing experience. Currents was customizable in terms of content selection and was a minimalist reader for my chosen content. This new version puts emphasis on pay walled sites and serves up preconfigured sections (like a analog newspaper). They also removed the nifty drag gesture for minimizing the current selected article.Show lessSoperrepoS
Important features do not work
For example, options to filter out unwanted content fail. Personal preference is paramount. If I cannot customize my experience, I find it very difficult to continue using the App. Google should know me better by now. I provide enough feedback through the App for a proper algorithm, but it is like no matter how many times I tell Google NO about something, they tend to come back with a YES response, which is quite argumentative, rude and provocative. If I say I do not want to see a source, Google does nothing about it, other than gather data on my preferences. Gathering preference data and not implementing it to accommodate preference feels like being swindled. I gave you my preference, but instead of RESPECTING my preference, I am constantly DISRESPECTED every time Google ignores my preference data. A data-harvesting algorithm is useless if you drive users away with BAD DESIGN.Show lessTollenfel
My most-used app, but I have a wish list
Google News is far better than Apple’s news app. First and foremost, Google’s has a more natural scrolling feel (like Safari or other browsers), while Apple’s is overly sensitive in comparison (a slight scroll sends me halfway down an article). I also like Google’s rate of updates throughout the day and the customizability their app provides (not as good as it used to be however). I’m able to block news providers as a whole on Google (like when random British tabloids of ill repute kept showing up, I was easily able to block their content). Wish Google supported comments within the app like it used to (now have to navigate into the browser to view/reply). Also, the ability within the app to choose to view articles in Safari is now more limited. I now have to copy paste the articles into Safari instead of just clicking “open in Safari.”Show lessRkj0053
Update after update, still annoying
The app will often poorly present articles that, I suspect, are not optimised for google news. Returning to a feed will force articles to refresh only for you to miss out on another article you wanted to read.
Lastly, why is there no motoring/automotive section and instead lumping transport under the technology banner?Show lessiroarloud
Please bring back the old version
May 30 Update. After many months I decided to try Google News again. Still the same huge distracting graphics. Still the limited feeds that lean far left. So many other reviewers say the same thing yet the amateurish graphics dominate still. Deleting this again. Not worth my time in this format. I’ll try again with high hopes in six months or so. I want so much to like this app!
The new Google News is just plain horrible. The amateurish look is something a high school kid would create, full of big pictures and missing the ability to quickly scroll through headlines to find articles of interest without those glaring pictures distracting you until you just give up. Gone is the ability to use keywords of your choice to create a news tab, you can only choose from their limited lists. Google News now has the look of those webpages that are full of sensational gossip articles rather than raw news. Please bring back the old version.Show lessbitoguy
Who wants 5 versions of the same story?
This new format makes you wade through multiple versions of the same news story. In the older format, you could choose to look at expanded coverage if you wanted to. This is just tedious scrolling—and fewer actual stories.
Am I missing a way to collapse the coverage to one report for each news story? —with the option to look at other coverage if I chose to do so? I couldn’t see any way to collapse these repetitious listing. It should be up to the user to customize how the articles are presented. I loved the old Google news. This is dumb.
One more thing: when I look at the 69,000+ reviews, I see that the average rating is 4.5 stars. Yet, when I scroll through the recent reviews, at least half, maybe more, give it very few stars. Are the 69K reviews including your past versions of Google News which was much better? Something’s wrong here...
And one additional note: today I clicked on a story from the WSJ, but was unable to read it because I don’t have a WSJ subscription. It would make sense to tell users “subscription required to read article” before sending them on a wasted digital trip. Or better yet, don’t include links to articles that the general public can’t access. I have to agree with other reviewers that this is a form of click bait that benefits the publishers of the WSJ, not the dupes on Google News whose time is wasted.Show lessJohn Vasi
Smh
I have deleted multiple apps due to the fact that anything, remotely close to republican, conservative news channels are not shown. It’s not fair it’s frankly depressing that people who run apps like this do balance correctly. The whole point of the media and journalism is to bring the truth to the table and let the people choose what to believe. Instead it’s so heavy in one direction it paints a picture that only one viewpoint is worthy of your time and only one viewpoint is correct. I am an army vet and a conservative, however I read all news and compare, It is very difficult to do so when I can’t even find fox in the newsstand section, Hell I didn’t see one middle ground channel in the newsstand section. So yet again I have to delete this app and find someone with some balls to run a balanced channel. Thank you.Show lessCavScout1990
Ads Disguised as News
This is such a downgrade from the old Google News and Weather app it’s hard to fully explain. Gone are the days of easily skimming through the headlines and finding interesting articles. Now, google insists on bombarding you with a visual kaleidoscope of pictures that serve as click bait.
The worst part however, are the constant advertisements to products that google wants me to buy. I can understand and even put up with advertisements. It’s an unfortunate reality in Google’s ecosystem. What I can not abide, however, are advertisements disguised as news articles. This is deceptive and makes the app almost useless for me. I don’t have time to weed through articles to see what is real and what is a cash grab.
There is no way to turn this off. I can turn off personalized ads but not ads altogether. Bad play Google. Bad play.Show lessStrumdrum
Adding to Disappointment
Poorly designed app. This is the only app that competes with Apple News, which is terrible. This is my main smartphone app. I spend more than a dozen hours a week using it. What did you do!?! I hate it.
The feed doesn’t load sometimes. The app freezes. The feed stops loading, while reading. Requiring you to reload the app and losing your place. The curation is worse. The local news is gone. The app is a battery hog. The app using too much data for a news app. Why is it always trying to run in the background? Why is it better at loading content while I’m not using it? The news isn’t updating as often. The main draw for Google News is that it’s always updating new content. The full coverage feature is great, when the app works. Please pay a couple of people to tighten this app up for us Google.
Discouraged news junkie. 😥Show lessZerkry
Superior to the Apple News app, easily
I have used the Apple News app religiously before discovering Google had their own alternative. Apple News is built into iOS making it convenient but I had one continuing issue during our time together, no matter how many times I marked certain types of articles/editorials with ‘dislike’ it seemingly had no affect on my news feed.
Google News doesn’t have this problem, in fact within a week it seems to have already figured out what stories I want to read and which ones I don’t. This is something Apple News didn’t do in well over a year of use. Thank you Google!Show lessKyloRen1
