# Google wrecks personalized news page. Good alternatives? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 21, 2018, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-wrecks-personalized-news-page-good-alternatives/814572 "2018-05-21T17:41:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2018, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-wrecks-personalized-news-page-good-alternatives/814572/21 "2018-05-22T15:36:54Z")
Another complaint about Google News that I haven’t seen mentioned: If you change the ‘Language & Region’ settings, it doesn’t remember the change the next time you go there, but reverts back to what it was. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2018, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-wrecks-personalized-news-page-good-alternatives/814572/22 "2018-05-22T17:05:52Z")
> [@jasg](#): > > 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](https://imgur.com/a/0dHTnKi) screen snaps. Nobody mentioned that it was a phone issue. That makes all the difference. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2018, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-wrecks-personalized-news-page-good-alternatives/814572/23 "2018-05-22T17:33:52Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Nobody mentioned that it was a phone issue. That makes all the difference. It’s not just a phone issue. On a phone or tablet the layout is more problematic than on a large screen, but all the other problems are the same on all systems. ---
**Author:** ![Chetumal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@Chetumal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chetumal)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2018, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-wrecks-personalized-news-page-good-alternatives/814572/24 "2018-05-22T17:45:39Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Nobody mentioned that it was a phone issue. That makes all the difference. I was referring in my OP to the desktop version. ---
**Author:** ![jasg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f0a364/32.png) [@jasg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jasg)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2018, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-wrecks-personalized-news-page-good-alternatives/814572/25 "2018-05-22T17:58:25Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Nobody mentioned that it was a phone issue. That makes all the difference. Those are iPad screens. ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2018, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-wrecks-personalized-news-page-good-alternatives/814572/26 "2018-05-22T18:57:13Z")
> [@jasg](#): > > Those are iPad screens. They look the same before/after on my desktop screen, though. “Mobile device”, like Communism, is a red herring. ---
**Author:** ![DavidwithanR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3bc359/32.png) [@DavidwithanR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidwithanR)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2018, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-wrecks-personalized-news-page-good-alternatives/814572/27 "2018-05-22T19:09:49Z")
> [@Orwell](#): > > 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](http://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. I never knew that. I was actually trying to joke about a return to 1995. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2018, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-wrecks-personalized-news-page-good-alternatives/814572/28 "2018-05-22T19:50:22Z")
I’m testing out Feedly. Pros: For every source I give it, it pulls in basically everything they have, rather than just periodically showing the random article from that source every few months. The app is pretty good. Cons: You have to know what sources you want. It just ranks articles by popularity (weddings, shootings, missing blondes, etc.) and/or by recency, which is just everything in the world. Google used some sort of analysis to boost things that it knew I would be interested in. Here, you’re out of luck. (Popularity+Recency mix mode doesn’t suck.) A lot more paywalls. Google must have had some deals with news sources to show their content at certain rates for free. * * * Overall, I think I’ll adapt and (once I’ve started paying for all the sources I’m reading), I think I’ll end up ahead of where I was before because I’ll be getting more articles overall, rather than never even getting a chance to ignore something. (Getting off topic) I suspect that the impetus for the change was that Google is trying to combat the echo chamber of the Internet by removing everyone’s control of their sources. As such, it may be unlikely that they’ll go back to the original design. Unfortunately, I used their filtering to get rid of things that score poorly on factuality ratings. But I accept that I’m probably in the minority on that (though, not necessarily on the SDMB). ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2018, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-wrecks-personalized-news-page-good-alternatives/814572/29 "2018-05-22T22:35:59Z")
Google also used to have an RSS feed, since discontinued. Link to google finance discussion from last January. There was a workaround back then that no longer works. [https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=847801](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=847801) Ironically, I would be willing to pay an annual fee for google’s services and UI from 5 years ago. As for the present, alternatives deserve investigation. Here’s a comparison of feed aggregators at wiki: [Comparison of feed aggregators - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_feed_aggregators) ---
**Author:** ![Flyer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/flyer/32/7298_2.png) [@Flyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flyer)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2018, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-wrecks-personalized-news-page-good-alternatives/814572/30 "2018-05-23T05:13:24Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > 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.](https://theoldgnews.com/news/headlines?ned=us&hl=en) 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? What a lot of people don’t understand is that Google is an ad company. Any other services that they provide are purely optional on their part, and may be discontinued on a whim. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2018, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-wrecks-personalized-news-page-good-alternatives/814572/31 "2018-05-23T05:50:42Z")
> [@Flyer](#): > > What a lot of people don’t understand is that Google is an ad company. Any other services that they provide are purely optional on their part, and may be discontinued on a whim. A lot of people understand that. Some don’t understand why google would replace services that gain page views with services that drive eyeballs away to other websites. ---
**Author:** ![Raza](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/raza/32/213_2.png) [@Raza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raza)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2018, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-wrecks-personalized-news-page-good-alternatives/814572/32 "2018-05-23T15:48:32Z")
Google has a long history of pissing me off with creating great little features, then removing them. I still haven’t gotten over the “Google Home Page” (I don’t recall the official name) where you could have widgets for weather, top 3 local headlines, market indices, etc. I loved it - then they killed it for no discernible reason. It couldn’t have been cost. Google Finance is another they recently screwed up, as others mentioned. Despite my skepticism, I’ve switched to [finance.yahoo.com](http://finance.yahoo.com) and created a portfolio view that I really, really like - even better than what GF had been. And now [news.google.com](http://news.google.com) is a fail, too. It was one of my go-to sites 2-3x a day, but if I have to wade through sports and entertainment, and have to make a handful of clicks just to see my old personalized content, then I’m abandoning the platform. I generally like the **New York Times** articles and writing (if they aren’t on pop culture or “news of the weird” topics), but I shudder at the subscription cost. **Question:** if you subscribe to the NYT (digital), can you customize your feed on their site? If so, it might be worth the $10/month (to me). PS: I’ve been trying the Google News app (iOS), but so far I’m not seeing a great deal of customization actually being delivered. ---
**Author:** ![weef](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d6d6ee/32.png) [@weef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/weef)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2018, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-wrecks-personalized-news-page-good-alternatives/814572/33 "2018-05-23T17:34:03Z")
I’m always on the search for a good news aggregator but have yet to find one. If anyone knows of one where I can define the keywords I’m interested in, include/exclude sources so I can block [FoxNews.com](http://FoxNews.com) if I want to, create sections where the articles will be displayed in, and the site/app scours the internet for relevant stories, I’d be interested in hearing about it. I had used a few RSS readers in the past, Google’s included, but think the current ones lack the intelligence I’m looking for. At this point I’m considering developing one of my own just so I can optimize my news reading. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2018, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-wrecks-personalized-news-page-good-alternatives/814572/34 "2018-05-23T18:14:40Z")
> [@Raza](#): > > I generally like the **New York Times** articles and writing (if they aren’t on pop culture or “news of the weird” topics), but I shudder at the subscription cost. A lot of newspaper websites operate on the basis “you can read X articles per month free” but more than that you have to pay. This X is set in a browser cookie. For many sites to get around this all you have to do is access the website via private browsing/incognito mode: > **[How to go incognito in Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Opera](https://www.digitalcitizen.life/how-browse-web-incognito-all-big-browsers/)** > > Are you wondering how to go incognito in your web browser and what that means? Incognito Mode is a useful tool that prevents your browser from saving data about you and the websites you visit. While every major browser offers private browsing, the... ---
**Author:** ![jasg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f0a364/32.png) [@jasg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jasg)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2018, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-wrecks-personalized-news-page-good-alternatives/814572/35 "2018-05-23T19:44:28Z")
> [@Raza](#): > > I generally like the **New York Times** articles and writing (if they aren’t on pop culture or “news of the weird” topics), but I shudder at the subscription cost. > **Question:** if you subscribe to the NYT (digital), can you customize your feed on their site? > If so, it might be worth the $10/month (to me). I am a subscriber on my iPad (switched when the cost of the dead tree local paper hit the same as the NYT digital). The only customization I see is the ability to rearrange items on the menu. You can download it and try it for free. ---
**Author:** ![Raza](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/raza/32/213_2.png) [@Raza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raza)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2018, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-wrecks-personalized-news-page-good-alternatives/814572/36 "2018-05-23T20:48:47Z")
Thanks, **PastTense** and **jasg** ; while I like their reporting, it doesn’t sound like subscribing would be any more efficient. ---
**Author:** ![WolfpackJeep](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpackjeep/32/2921_2.png) [@WolfpackJeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WolfpackJeep)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2018, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-wrecks-personalized-news-page-good-alternatives/814572/37 "2018-05-24T13:43:28Z")
Another vote for the suckiness of the redesigned Google News page! They ruined the Android version of their news app too… Newsstand, which used to have a neat little widget for displaying headlines from your favorite topic, has been replaced by News, which is so basic that it’s pretty much worthless. As of now, Google’s News & Weather app is still showing my custom topics from the Google News page, but like the new News app, its widgets force you to view weather alongside news snippets, which is useless to me. On my craptastic work computer, I resorted to creating live bookmarks in Firefox to keep up with certain RSS feeds. I’ve also been using Feedly and Flipboard on my phone for years. Feedly is great for following specific feeds – I even use it to keep up with comic strips – and their Android widget is nice. Flipboard is great for following topics as well as specific sources, but some people might find the flipping part to be a bit gimmicky. ---
**Author:** ![PlaceboTarget](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/placebotarget/32/1073_2.png) [@PlaceboTarget](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlaceboTarget)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2018, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-wrecks-personalized-news-page-good-alternatives/814572/38 "2018-05-27T11:45:00Z")
I’m not crazy about customized content by my wife uses Flipboard News and she’s happy with it. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2018, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-wrecks-personalized-news-page-good-alternatives/814572/39 "2018-05-27T14:38:52Z")
Just to add in another google complaint: They used to be the best way to aggregate local news. There is a “local” on the side, but it doesn’t seem to work nearly as well. I get fewer results from a much wider geographic area. When I am interested in local, I’m not really all that interested in stuff that happened on the other side of the state. ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2018, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-wrecks-personalized-news-page-good-alternatives/814572/40 "2018-05-27T15:14:54Z")
Why is it that when something works well Google and other sites (IMDB, I’m looking at you) always have to meddle with it and make it worse? It used to be so simple to remove sections or re-order them. As far as I can tell that’s impossible now (and yes, I’ve tried following the instructions on that Google News Forum post. They don’t work.) Screw Google. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-wrecks-personalized-news-page-good-alternatives/814572.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-wrecks-personalized-news-page-good-alternatives/814572.md?page=3)