Google News seems to be constantly testing new user interfaces, features and designs. The latest design was hinted to in the Google News Help forum by Fred of Google and I spotted screen captures of it in the Google Blogoscoped Forums. Let me share those screen shots from Jérôme in the forum.
Here is the home page test:
Here is the article list test:
Jérôme has some outstanding feedback on this design:
Wow, I really hate this and it's probably the worst change I ever had with a Google service.
- It canceled all my personalization
- I can't remove the local news sectio, which must be restrict to a city-level to make sense (very poor quality otherwise)
- I can only have one column.
- I can't chose how each topic should rank, i.e I'm forced to have the entertainment section above the health one.
- I have to hover each headline for about 1 second to get few words about th article. It makes absolutely no sense to wait that long compared to go directly read the article. "Japan Economic Data Worsens – Wall Street Journal – Tomoyuki Tachikawa – 3 hours ago" How meaningful is this?
Personally, I agree on many points. I don't like the current interface for Google News, but is this an improvement?
Forum discussion at Google News Help and Google Blogoscoped Forums.
