I have liked Google News since it debuted, and it’s been my go-to startup page for most of that time. I like the quick overview of what the world’s been doing since I last looked, even if I don’t follow any of the links. (Now, of course, news aggregators are a virtual wooden nickel a million, so…)
In the vein of the clickbait thread and discussion, I’ve noticed that GN links increasingly go to third-rate, even junk sites. It used to be that stories were linked to a major news source and gave three or four alternatives on the same level. Now… it seems like every story I click on goes to some pissant media blog, or an outlet in India, or another such very low worth source.
(I am in particular tired of being referred to things written for the Indian market, which for whatever reason read like they were written for junior high students by high schoolers. The English is fine, but the writing and word choice are awkward and a bit… juvenile.)
Is it a sweeping change in media re-use agreements? Serious news sites going behind paywalls? Is S.P.E.C.T.R.E. now taking on G.O.O.G.L.E.? All I know is I am about to find another good news aggregator to replace GN as my startup…
I haven’t seen any change in Google News, and certainly none of the weird links you report. Do you have a second browser that you could use to see if the issue is browser specific?
I still use Google News, but frequently find their news providers, or at least the top link to a given news story (the one shown before expanding), to be…troublesome.
What I like is that:
A) because that URL is designed for mobile users, I get very little in the way of extraneous stuff (but I’m using it on my desktop browser)
B) it’s nearly 100% text
C) it’s written in a “top-heavy” style (there is a recent thread on this), so the first blurb you get when you click on a story usually gives you a good amount of detail, and
D) if you expand to the full story, you still get top-heavy content, with most facts in the first two paragraphs, and
E) no videos
I don’t know about Google news, but Yahoo news, recently, which used to be quite good for a quick, fairly light, overview of what is going on in the world, has absolutely gone into the toilet. The default front page is entirely devoted to celebrity gossip and “human interest” crap, and even if you click the “news” tab, you seem to get a completely random mix of news stories from around the world (including small-town America, even on the Yahoo UK site), mixed in with heavily disguised ad clickbait. If there are any big stories of the day (either UK or international), you can’t rely on their showing anywhere near the top of the “news” page, and they may not be there at all.
Part of it might be things I’m seeing in the “Recommended for You” section, which is nothing but fluffy clickbait sites.
Maybe it’s selective, maybe conf bias, maybe a bad week… but wow, what has happened to online news? It seems like across the board, every provider has taken a dive into the toilet and replaced anything like news/journalism with eyeball-hooks and clickbait.
I have Reuters on my phone. It tends to be kind of slow to get story updates - I find myself searching elsewhere for story turns that have been out for a half day or more.
Google News is at its best when you customize it to your preferences by clicking the “Personalize” button:
Those sliders on the right dictate which sources you prefer, which sections you don’t want to see at all (delete the “Suggested for you” section, for example, to get rid of news stories based on your search history), and which topics/keywords interest you the most.
If you like Reuters, just max out its slider and make other ones lower.
