Google wrecks personalized news page. Good alternatives?

General Questions
#1

My homepage each morning used to be Google News. I had it set up to show me news stories about topics I am interested in, and not those I’m not. I’m not interested in sports, the royal wedding, or the Mueller investigation, and it was great that I didn’t need to wade through stories on those to see what I wanted.

Now they’ve gone and broken it. All of my custom sections are gone. They’ve apparently replaced it all with some stupid AI interface that is supposed to “know” what stories I’m interested in. It’s a broken, annoying mess.

All I want is to log into a clean page that shows me new stories I am interested in and that’s all. I don’t care if it shows ads because I use multiple ad blockers and ghostery to black all that crap.

Any suggestions? Just tried Bing News and didn’t care for it. I’ve heard about something called RSS and looked into it but could not figure out how to use it.

#2

RSS is (to oversimplify) automated headline retrieval from sites you know you probably want to read.

#3

Ok, thanks. That’s not actually what I want. I follow some cold-case crime files and would like a news feed that shows me any new stories, from any source, when they are published, even small-town news sites and blogs. I am also following several issues that are being floated as bills in congress and want to get up-to-the-minute updates on those.

Doing a google search for each case, every day would be numbingly time-consuming and not worth it. Google News worked perfectly for my needs, now it’s been wrecked.

#4

I wonder if there’s a person out there who’s interested in the same thing, and who happens to have more spare time than you do.

#5

On your google news page, there should be a section on “Favorites” and “saved searches” that should have all of your old selected news topics.

#6

I went to google news to see what it would recommend for me “based on my interests.” The first link was to the royal wedding. I’ve never gone to any story about the royal family for any reason ever that I can remember. My interests, my foot.

#7

Thanks, I did that. But when I actually click on any news link, it just redirects right back to the “new and improved” :rolleyes: Google News page. All the links are broken.

#8

Many people share your opinion. We will see if Google rethinks this move…

In the meantime, here is a less-than-perfect workaround (left sidebar links don’t work). (N.B. I have had problems creating a shortcut for this -"%ned" gets saved as “%25ned”)

https://news.google.com/news/feeds?output=rss&q=%ned

The Google News forum shows a lot of unhappy users.

Another site I am playing with is : http://www.newslookup.com

#9

Thanks. I’ve tried numerous workaround links that were posted on the google forums and yours as well but Google is apparently hijacking them all as soon as they are used, and redirecting all links back to their generic new (shitty) site.

I’m trying newslookup, but can’t figure out how to make a widget that serves me news stories from multiple sources based on keywords. I can make a widget that shows me abcnews.com stories on “cruise ships”. But I can’t figure out how to get stories about cruise ships from multiple sources in one widget. Anyone know how?

#10

Count me in on the “original” google side. Maybe we’ll get a “classic” option. I’ve lost or at least can’t find many of my old interests.

Oh yes, and get off my lawn Mr. Google.

#11

I am also unhappy with this change. I am glad to see I myself did not hit the wrong button and somehow break it.

#12

I’m pretty sure this dovetails with them dropping the whole, “do no evil” schitch from their corporate gobbledygook.

#13

It was just yesterday here (or at the Other Message Board?) that someone linked to a page to display in an old Google News format. Is this any better?

What I want is a link to the old Google Finance page. It was orders of magnitude better than any of the several other websites that graph stock prices. Why in tarnation did Google get rid of it?

#14

I’m glad to find someone else who misses the old Google Finance page. The new one (like the new Google News page) tries to guess what I’m interested in, based on no actual data, apparently. I’m very interested in Square, Visa, and PayPal. Perpetually interested. I’ve filled out a couple feedback forms, but I don’t think it’s going to change back and haven’t found a suitable replacement.

#15

Google was basic.

Then it improved, slowly at first, then extremely quickly.

Then it got worse, slowly. Until right about now, I guess, because I guess we must be at the beginning of the “getting worse extremely quickly” part.

Maybe Altavista or Yahoo will be the next big thing. :slight_smile:

#16

Probably true. Yahoo ruined its personalized home page about two or three years ago. I searched for an alternative at that time, and didn’t come up with much. The one I am using now is www.protopage.com. You can personalize it to a degree with weather, news, etc. from different sources. I don’t like it as much as I used to like myyahoo.

#17

I’m not seeing what you all are seeing.

I have a menu on the left side. It works exactly as it ought to do, taking me to those sections.

The middle is the standard news stories feed. The only change is a “For You” section of four stories, which is easily skippable. The personalized sections are not there, but under the Favorites line on the left hand menu.

The right-hand column is weather, fact check, spotlight, and in the news, all good things I want.

All the links work, the menu is handy and compact, and the extra stuff is desirable. What are you seeing that I’m not?

#18

Exapno Mapcase:

  1. Some of us want to delete some of the standard sections (such as Sports or Entertainment). We did this in the past but can no longer do so.
  2. Going to favorites for personalized sections means additional clicks.

If you can no longer personalize what you want and have to do additional clicks why just not go to a few news sites (New York Times, Guardian, whatever) instead?

#19

Just to add my voice to the general consensus that Google News now sucks.  :(
https://news.google.com/news/feeds?output=rss&q=%

Mostly seems to work okay, but there is the occasional link that takes you back to the new Google News, so you have to watch out for that. Realtime coverage also doesn’t work.

http://www.theoldgnews.com

Also mostly okay, except for realtime coverage.

#20

The menu may be compact, but the content certainly is not. I see two or three items on my iPad (landscape) each with several lines for the same story from different sources. The new menu bar is wider, the right column is missing, search bar is larger.

All together, the space dedicated to news is greatly reduced. Then there are the issues of customization which are missing or broken.

Take a look at these screen snaps.