
Google to add 'news feed' to website and app - codefined
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-40656033
======
pesenti
20 years ago, all the engines (AltaVista, Lycos) did exactly that. And then
they all became "portal" like. And then a brand new engine with just a search
box (so refreshing so clean) came along and swiped them over....

~~~
thomyorkie
The difference is personalization. I never would visit a portal site like
yahoo, but every morning I look through my Google Now feed. Relevance matters.

~~~
pjc50
Does anyone else remember the personalisable "iGoogle"?

~~~
cyxxon
Yeah, I actually hated when that went away. I had several RSS feeds on there,
my inbox, my calendar... never found a good replacement. I used Netvives for a
while, but it was somehow not the same (can't really put my finger on it,
though).

~~~
hammock
Can be replaced by Google Now and/or your Android home screen (inbox widget,
etc)

~~~
TeMPOraL
Except Google Now still completely sucks because you have close to zero direct
control on what gets shown there.

Also: I like that they're experimenting, but come on. Replacing a settings
menu with a list of very specific yes/no questions that are added to that list
as you encounter them - that's just _wrong_. You don't even get a benefit of
being able to scroll through a settings screen to discover what features are
available...

------
beambot
If only there was a system to create "feeds" of website entries (such as news
sites), aggregate them, and then read them at our discretion. Then we could
each create our own personal Google homepage.

Google could brand such an offering as "Google reader" and "Google
personalized homepage"...

(For those who don't remember: these both used to be a thing!)

</Bitterness>

~~~
crowbahr
See but that gives you, the consumer, toouch control over what you see.

They don't want it to be your choice.

~~~
chrischen
Yea if they gave you the choice not screw yourself over, then you wouldn't be
able to get screwed over by Google </sarcasm>

------
aphextron
The "newsfeed" pattern is one of the worst ideas humanity has ever had. Never
has it been so easy to manipulate public opinion at will. 10 years ago there
was a such thing as standards in journalism. Now anypoliticalblog.com's
headline has been promoted to the equal status of an actual news organisation
by means of the implicit legitimacy of appearing in a news feed. This insanity
has reached a crescendo with the official endorsement of sites like
breitbart.com by the White House, and I don't think there's any going back.

It's a psychological hack, and the promoters of this technology know it.

~~~
BigJono
> 10 years ago there was a such thing as standards in journalism

Was there? Because last I checked all that these so called 'reputable' sources
of news seem to put out is biased garbage full of misleading data and often
blatant lies.

I've seen better journalism from bloody buzzfeed than I have from some of the
"proper" news networks in Australia...

~~~
aphextron
>Was there? Because last I checked all that these so called 'reputable'
sources of news seem to put out is biased garbage full of misleading data and
often blatant lies.

The inculcation of this sentiment is precisely the effect I'm referring to.
The waters have become so muddied with nonsense that no one can tell right
from wrong anymore. And thus, actual news organizations with trained reporters
and fact checkers and a tradition of at least being held to _some_ kind of
accountability lose all credibility. It's not a perfect system, but it's one
which evolved to solve the exact problems we are facing here. There's a reason
Trump attacks the media's credibility on a daily basis. Throwing your hands up
and saying "it's all fake news" is precisely what the propagandists want.

~~~
hyperdunc
Is there a reason most of the MSM attacks Trump's credibility on a daily
basis?

The reasons are ratings and political ideology. They know that a lot of people
hate Trump so they attack him. Any evidence of wrongdoing on Trump's part is
merely a happy extra for the MSM.

If Obama did the same things that Trump does, do you think the MSM would
behave the same way?

The MSM have cried wolf so many times that now half the country will not
listen if they actually find something solid against Trump.

Whatever your position on Trump, it's hard to think of the MSM as being driven
by actual journalism. And that's a real shame for the small number of
journalists in the MSM who actually have integrity.

~~~
Cursuviam
I agree; the right-wing press lacks high quality journalists. Journalists seem
to happen to lean left a whole lot more.

~~~
nl
This is a convenient fiction.

There are plenty of right-wing journalists who have similar quality to left
wing. Publishers like _The National Review_ have fine writers and it is hard
to argue the a publication founded by William F. Buckley is some liberal
organisation.

The "problem" is that all these organizations are critical of Trump too.

~~~
aphextron
>The National Review

And who else?

~~~
soundwave106
Certain other commentary magazines (eg Weekly Standard and Commentary), think
tanks (AEI, Heritage, Cato), business newspapers (Wall Street Journal).

I do think there is an issue in that these sort of commentators have much less
visibility than before in American politics, so it's easy to form a negative
opinion about right wing journalism. Partially as a result, I can name several
commentators that have migrated from "Republican conservative" to a more
"independent" oriented stance. Names like David Frum, Andrew Sullivan, Bruce
Bartlett, David Brooks, and George Will come to mind. None of these names are
100% "liberal", neither are still today. They just don't fit well with right-
wing media that has increasingly become populist.

It is probably my bias, but I can't think of a similar type of left-wing
commentator that's made the same transition. On the other hand, I've noticed
increased populism in more left-oriented media too...

This is a shame, because even when these type of commentators were at their
most raucous, I always got the impression that both sides respected each
other. (You saw the same thing at, say the Supreme Court, where Scalia and
Ginsburg were friends.) A lot of media these days in contrast is extremely us
vs. them and tribal oriented, with seemingly no respect for the other side at
all.

------
to_bpr
>The feed will include news stories from a variety of publishers, to avoid the
so-called filter bubble effect, where people follow only content aligned with
their pre-existing point of view.

>"To provide information from diverse perspectives, news stories may have
multiple viewpoints from a variety of sources... and, when available, you'll
be able to fact check," the company said in a blog post.

I'm growing increasingly uncomfortable with how Google, Facebook etc. are now
positioning themselves in terms of what news and sources they believe we
should and should not consume.

If this piece is true and this update isn't confined to the Google app then I
think it may be the final nail in the coffin of my relationship with Google
products.

~~~
killedbydeath
2020 election will be Larry Page running against Mark Zuckerberg

~~~
H4CK3RM4N
Trump would probably be a better candidate than either of them, at least he’s
actually run a business and would have four years of presidential experience.

~~~
altshiftprtscrn
Your comment implies that Mark Zuckerberg has not run a business.

~~~
euyyn
Nor Larry Page!

------
corndoge
I had to double check to see if I had woken up from a coma and it was in fact
April 1, 2018, but no. What a way to destroy the most iconic webpage in
history.

~~~
euyyn
I would guess non-logged in access would still yield the all-white page?

------
usaphp
Who visits google.com anyway? I am pretty sure majority of those users who
aren't interested in seeing these news are already using google search via
browser address bar. Only those who go to google.com will see these news , and
they seem to be an exact type of people who would enjoy such content and spend
hours browsing it generating more revenue to google

~~~
dyukqu
Majority of _regular_ users (who do not care or even know about any kind of
online privacy, open web, net neutrality etc.) I interact with go to
google.com, write down e.g. "facebook" and then log in! They don't even know
they can use url bar for searching (let alone typing xyz.com directly). It
makes my blood boil every time I see that. I try to explain, they usually just
don't care to listen/understand. Coming from other thread about Firefox
marketshare, it's mostly this kind of users that kill the open web and help
billion-dollar walled-gardens prosper. There are billions of them.

~~~
mvdwoord
Paraphrasing something else... this is probably what actual hell is like.
Having to watch people browse the web in this way. Indefinitely.

------
yohui
Google's blog post talks about introducing the newsfeed to the Google app, but
I don't see any mention of Google.com:
[https://www.blog.google/products/search/feed-your-need-
know/](https://www.blog.google/products/search/feed-your-need-know/)

Anyone know where the BBC found this confirmation?

~~~
quarterbox
I think they weren't being precise and just meant how the app will look, which
some people might equate with google.com itself.

I don't see any reason to believe it would affect the site.

~~~
yohui
Perhaps the BBC spoke to someone at Google who said the news feed would be
available via the web – à la
[https://news.google.com](https://news.google.com) or
[https://newsstand.google.com/](https://newsstand.google.com/) – which the
reporter misunderstood to mean Google.com itself would display the news feed?

It just seems anomalous that such a great change would be announced with so
little fanfare (a single sentence in the article). I need to see confirmation
before I believe it.

~~~
yohui
Update: [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/07/google-denies-
claims...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/07/google-denies-claims-of-a-
desktop-google-com-revamp/)

------
chartreusek
Didn't they try basically this before, then had it fail and discontinue in the
form of iGoogle(2005-2013)? The idea of google going back to that is just
nuts.

At least DuckDuckGo has got the search page concept right.

~~~
andygates
They definitely discontinued it, but that doesn't mean it failed. What do you
think made them kill it? At the time, it felt like textbook Google
capriciousness (see Reader, etc).

~~~
fwn
I expected it to be a strategic push towards their more interactive content
aggregation feature built into Google+.

------
welcomebrand
I can't wait for them to add a stories UI so I can see what my friends are
searching for while I'm searching.

------
shadowmint
It's hard to believe this is going to happen to google.com

Google is, if nothing else, obsessed with metrics; unless they'd A/B/...
tested this _to death_ , there is zero chance they'll roll it out to their
homepage.

I can't believe it, and it's not mentioned anywhere on their blog post.

To be fair, most people probably search from the chrome toolbar now, but even
so, I imagine at most, we'll see a staged roll out to a cohort to test it.

~~~
intoverflow2
Being obsessed with metrics is the exact reason something like this would go
through.

All companies that design to metrics instead of vision always ship the worst
UI/UX crimes. This is the ideology we have to thank for things like the
lightbox sign up forms that block or lock out content if you try to browse
without an account on FB/Pintrest etc.

You're assuming the metric Google is designing for is still how fast a user
gets what they want off site. What if the metric they're designing for is how
long someone spends in the Google ecosystem?

~~~
BorisMelnik
on that note...how on earth is it possibly that the "im feeling lucky" button
is still doing something for them?

------
pasbesoin
Really, Google, all I want is my search-oriented "plus" operator back, and for
you to unfuck search.

I would have bought into the other Plus, your social network, but you fucked
over your base product (search) during its launch, and then went all "real
names" et al. on us.

~~~
empressplay
If you click on Tools and then change "All Results" to "Verbatim", then it
behaves a bit more like it used to

~~~
Jaruzel
I can't find this on Google.com - is it just in the App ?

~~~
Terr_
From the search-results page, there's a "Tools" button which exposes a bar
containing "Any Time, All Results". Click "All Results" and it exposes
"Verbatim" as another choice.

There might be a more-permanent way to set it if you are logged-in, but I
don't usually do that for Google for privacy reasons.

~~~
Jaruzel
Aha. thank you. It would seem the magic is:

    
    
      &tbs=li:1
    

On the URL. As I use a custom search page as my home page, I shall alter it
accordingly.

------
BorisMelnik
I've been using Google Home / Android version of this for a year or so now,
and I have to say I really enjoy it. NOt sure if I will also enjoy the desktop
version, but the app is truly intuitive. It shows me not just "news" but stuff
like

-amazon price udpates on products I like -random forum comments -HN threads trending -and of course, news type news

either way I don't ;like a cluttered feed but I do have my eye on this

------
spookyuser
Dear God. I can barely handle the news snippets that have started appearing in
Google Now, I'm actually really close to disabling the entire thing because of
them. I guess this means they're not going away anytime soon.

~~~
verytrivial
I disabled them after about a day and I don't feel like I'm missing anything.
I have about as much respect for news/trivia noise as the ads you hear in call
hold music.

~~~
spookyuser
Please tell me how? Is there a way to disable them without disabling google
now?

~~~
verytrivial
Nope! There's no way. Funny, that.

(Same goes for Google's new-ish "share location" feature of Maps. Want that?
Then you'll have to share and record you location for all apps. And you have
to hunt into settings to re-disable it EVERY SINGLE TIME. It's a feature!
Basically a Trojan horse for Google's "record everything" business need, but
less immediately threatening. A Trojan gnat, perhaps.)

------
orbitingpluto
What I want to know about Google's news feed priorities is what possessed them
to think it's a good idea to completely overtake the Play Newsstand app?

To access a magazine subscription, you must open Play Newsstand, click on the
Library icon now relocated to the bottom (as they've culled all options from
the hamburger menu), then scroll down every single news feed source to which
you are subscribed (I believe there are defaults as well), just to get to your
most recent issues.

I spend about 10x more for magazines on Play Newsstand than I do on Play movie
rentals & android apps every year. Yet the options for automating downloads,
selecting the type/quality of download, verifying library content, etc are
amateurish at best. You cannot even read a magazine using Google Chrome in
Linux.

I also have almost a full year's worth of a subscription that doesn't even
show up. When I called support, they stated it was a known issue. No refund
and no attempt to fix. $70 down the drain.

But yeah, my news feed is so much more important than the household $500/yr on
magazine subscriptions.

------
darren_
The bit about adding it to the website seems like a misinterpretation/over-
extrapolation of something said in a briefing about it, specifically that the
news feed would be brought to mobile web browsers 'in some form' (see quotes
below). That's pretty different from "the feed is definitely being attached to
google.com", and also seems to entirely exclude the idea of it showing up on
desktop google.com as well.

(disclaimer: I work at google, but I know nothing much about this in
particular)

Fortune: > "In addition to putting Google Feed on mobile apps, the company is
looking at attaching it to web browsers in some form, Shashi Thakur, a second
Google vice president for engineering, said during the briefing."
[http://fortune.com/2017/07/19/google-feed-compete-
facebook-n...](http://fortune.com/2017/07/19/google-feed-compete-facebook-
newsfeed/)

Indian Express: "The company is looking to bring it to mobile web browsers,
although it didn’t say when. “It should have roughly the same behavior” as a
news feed, Thakur said." [http://indianexpress.com/article/technology/tech-
news-techno...](http://indianexpress.com/article/technology/tech-news-
technology/google-scraps-sparse-search-page-for-full-fledged-news-feed-on-
mobile-app-4759171/)

------
monochromatic
Google's services just get worse and worse these days. Used to be so damn
good.

Sad.

------
rajeshmr
Seems like bad news to me! :(

However, one could easily start using "startpage.com" or duckduckgo.com with
"!google <your search string>" \- both deliver results from google!

------
slackingoff2017
Have we gone back in time? The idea of a newsfeed is ancient, pre-dating the
interne. The only difference is that this time around the feed only shows you
what you want to see.

Scary shit.

------
intoverflow2
This must mean that Yahoo and the other search engines that followed the
"portal" design pattern which Google was a welcome alternative to are so far
in the past that they're about to sleepwalk into the same design mistakes.

Looks like Duckduckgo has an opening, don't waste it.

------
mikeleeorg
If anyone has the Pocket browser extension installed, they'll notice that
Pocket automatically adds some featured (and maybe personalized?) stories to a
new blank Google Chrome web page, right below the search field.

I used to think this was obnoxious. Then I started clicking on the articles.
Now, I like this feature. It surfaces articles that I otherwise might have
missed.

So I could see this working with Google, if they do it right. And perhaps they
should offer a way to turn it off for users who prefer a simple UI.

------
verytrivial
Dear Google, my concentration is a valuable resource to me. Please don't
fritter it away. (In practical terms, please don't remove the option to
disable the trivia feed.)

~~~
majewsky
Custom style sheet to the rescue.

------
crispytx
What a horrible idea. Their original user interface consisting of a logo, a
search bar, and two buttons is iconic and made up a great deal of what set
google apart from its competitors. I know the first time I used Google in the
late 90's, the thing I noticed was the user interface. I was a middle school
kid then and knew nothing of PageRank. The reason I kept going back to google
was their UI.

------
pryelluw
Took long enough. The next step will be adding a Google+ integrated commenting
system.

But why?

Attention (which is Google's main product) is now captivated by the social
networks. Google must adapt or lose market share. What is interesting is how
they have not been able to really break into social. What about Google makes
it so difficult for them to do just that?

~~~
Jedi72
It's very important that people working on things like __human social
interaction __be able to do things like invert binary trees. They only hire
the best.

------
handedness
Without Marissa Mayer is there really nobody senior enough at Google to
successfully fight such a bad idea?

------
rubyn00bie
This seems like the true reason, or end game, for AMP. It's a way to control
the presentation and wall people in to prevent them from leaving Google.

I hate AMP and I'm pretty sure I'd hate this if I still used Google much.
Especially if it's driven solely by algorithms and AI.

------
roystonvassey
Do people even visit google.com anymore? I just type in the address bar of
browsers.

------
velobro
The whole home page news feed thing is exactly why my father chooses to use
Bing and I'm sure he's not the only one in that boat. Looks like Google has
realized this.

------
partiallypro
I use Bing's news section (on their home page) all the time, syncs with
Cortana. I assume this will be similar. I'm sure they will let you hide it,
even Bing does that.

------
tyingq
Betting clicking on any lands you on a Google AMP cached page too. So they can
control the page, add the AMP banner, carousel widget, etc.

------
0xbear
And it goes without saying that the news sources preferences will reflect
those of Google's predominantly liberal top brass.

~~~
hyperdunc
I suspect you're correct, despite any assurances to the contrary. And any bias
might not even be by design but rather just a result of the biases of the
people who make the feature.

------
parrellel
Well, I believe it really is time someone came up with a good replacement for
Google.

------
annon
This seems much more like Apple News than Facebook.

------
return0
Great, what i asked for: think for me before I do.

------
rawTruthHurts
Isn't this going back to 1999?

------
septarol
Who cares your privacy.

------
dabei
The title is a bit clickbaity. It's a news feed. I don't see how it's related
to Facebook.

