Tech giant Google is rolling out a redesign for its News, introducing a more modern and clutter-free interface, which puts the most important thing further highlighted.
The design borrows some elements from its mobile app and its design philosophy. Overall, the redesign makes scrolling through the news feed better. This way, every story gets its own clutter-free rectangle with links to related coverage and subjects and more prominent photo placement.
According to Google, the design prioritizes readability.
At first glance, the design updates the top of the page to show a redesigned navigation bar for 'Headlines', 'Local' and 'For You'.
Google has also redesigned news sources, headlines and publish times for better convenience.
The Story Cards in turn, allows people to see news at a different perspectives - encouraging them to gain for more information about the story. Related links are even given tags, like "Opinion" or "Live Updating."
Then there is the 'Full Coverage' page which allows users to immerse themselves in converage about a story or issue that they want to deep dive into.
Then there is the 'Fact Check' block where users can easily check the news' credibility.
Minor changes that are also worth noting, include algorithm for selecting videos that has been improved, and also the improvement on the built-in player.
Google is also making things easier for users by providing a Settings page where they can control the news they want to see. And to make Google News personal, users are allowed to name their custom sections, edit existing sections, type in interests they want to see in the 'For You' stream, and identify news sources that they want to see more (or less) of.
Keeping Up With The Competition
Google News was born in 2003, with as "Google News & Weather". It has an aim to make the news easier to digest.
As times passes, the efforts went a long way in helping Google to stay competitive against others - like Apple News - in mobile-first news readers, as well as against built-in news delivery popular by social media such as Facebook and Twitter.
Its app has been updated semi-regularly since its rebrand in 2014. But during that time, the desktop site for News remained mostly unchanged. The redesign that was introduced in June 27th, 2017, is meant to give a fresh look and appeal with a coat of Material Design, as well as some added functionalities.
The changes in design are mostly centered for readers on desktop. But some has made their way to mobile version of the service, including the card-based interface, confirmed Anand Paka, Google News' product manager.
At the moment of release, the design is only available for readers in the U.S.. Google has planned to slowly roll the feature out to more people on a global update.
