With the many information provided to us everyday, it can be challenging to just keep up. From constant news updates, tight schedules, traffic to commute and so forth, it's just too much to work for.
For users who find Google's mobile news card useful, Google is updating it to give it more conveniency. Not only that it can bring up stories related to things users have searched for, it can also show trending topics that happening in their area or around the world.
According to Google, "That’s why we’re rolling out an update to help you stay organized and in the know about the things that matter to you."
Google said that its feed has been leveraged with more powerful machine learning algorithms to better figure out what users might be interested in.
So for example, a user that is into photography, but also casually interested in fitness, their feed may show something like this:
Google also added a 'follow' button where users can tune their feed. On the search results like movies, sports team, celebrities and others, there's also an option to unfollow topics. Just tap a card that users may not want to see, and Google will stop showing it.
This would allow Google to understand the things that interest its users, more than the ones its algorithms could guess.
And in a way to provide information from diverse perspectives, news stories may have multiple viewpoints from a variety of sources, as well as other related information and articles. And when available, users will be able to fact check and see other relevant information to help get a more holistic understanding about the topics in their feed.
The attempt started out in December 2016 when Google first announced the news feed feature. At that time, Google said that the cards users see in their feed would become more relevant over time, and they would also change along with their interest and things trending in their area.
The move is similar to how Facebook manages to understand its users' interest. Using its Like and Follow features, Facebook can get insights about what is relevant to its users, and prioritize that over others.
As for Google, they have mostly relied upon algorithms and machine learning to understand what users like and what they want to see.
Adding this little feature could mean a big change to how Google works, and it's definitely a step forward to make things more personalized to users.
The feature is rolling out initially to users in the U.S. on Android and iOS.