On July 1st, Google News launched a redesign and to be frankly honest, it seems like it was a major failure. So many complaints, so much hate, so many switchers, all do to this single portal change.
I wanted to isolate a single complaint, amongst many, where an IT support guy from a medium size business chimed in. He posted his issue at the Google News Help forum:
thanks much for all the work the redesign has passed to our department. everyone's back from the 4th and since 8:00.01 am the phone wasn't stopped ringing. we're using Windows Server and everyone has google for their home page so everyone used google news. while news isn't a required(or supported) our company does allow employee's to browse during breaks. of course when anything changes we get the calls(blame). we have determined that there's no way we can support this change and don't want thousands of wasted employee hours as they try to set this mess up. our fix .... at 1:00 am cst 07/06/2010 new homepage for all users... bing.com. 1257 problems fixed.
You see that? Due to all the complaints he received from his co-workers, he flipped a switch and made them all ex-Googler users and now Bing users. It took him no time to make the switch and now there are 1,257 less Google users and 1,257 more Bing users.
Wow. One of many examples of people leaving Google over the Google News change.
Forum discussion at Google News Help.
