Google News redesign: whitespace and scrolling galore on desktop
Google News for the desktop has been redesigned by Google to make the desktop version of the service "more accessible and easier to navigate".
Google notes that the new user interface has a "clean and uncluttered look", that the new card format is "easier to browse", and that the new layout focuses on "key elements" such as "publisher names and article labels".
The company's designers have pretty much changed the whole interface of Google News. There is a new menu at the top to switch between headlines, latest news, personalized news, and regional news.
The left sidebar lists fewer links, and is only displayed when the width of the browser window exceeds a given minimum width.
The main pane uses a card design now, as does the right pane which offers weather information, fact checking, and "in the news" topics.
Interests can be managed more easily on Google News now. All you need to do is click on the "your interests" link in the sidebar after selecting "for you" at the top.
Tip: We have published an article on Google News alternatives. Make sure you check it out!
Google News issues
If you open Google News on a full HD or larger screen, you will notice that it makes use of a lot of whitespace (light gray actually). The screenshot above has been captured on a Full HD screen; if you open it on a 4K monitor or widescreen monitor, you get even more whitespace in the process.
Another change that you may notice if you used Google News before is that articles include titles only in the new interface.
Google News displayed the first sentence previously underneath each article. The sentence has been replaced with links to related coverage instead.
The number of news articles has been reduced as well. A quick comparison between the old and new design sees a reduction of articles by more than half. There is top news at the top of the page, and then half the articles that were there before.
Part of it comes from the use of larger thumbnail images, another from using larger font sizes for displaying text in the main pane. Google's own before after shot shows seven news articles in the old design, and only three on the new.
What this means is that you have to scroll more to browse the same number of news articles on Google News.
What you can do about it
A userstyle has not been created yet to improve the site's accessibility on large displays, or make it more efficient in terms of scrolling.
What you may do however is make use of RSS feeds by loading topics of interests, and clicking on the RSS Feeds link at the bottom of the page afterwards.
This loads the RSS feed for that particular topic. You can subscribe to it in some web browsers (Firefox and Opera support this for instance), by using feed readers for the desktop (QuiteRSS is my reader of choice), or online feed services.
Now You: What's your take on the Google News redesign?
Ever since Windows 10 made its ugly debut, websites and software have adopted the white space monster. It is NOT easier to read. It is NOT more convenient. What IS the point?
Agree with kalmy. White space monster indeed.
Google News was my homepage, and underscore WAS. The prior version, from my perspective, was the best news aggregator on the web. I changed to Bing yesterday, which isn’t a perfect layout either, but better than the new dumbed-down Google News atrocity.
Aside from this appropriately dispassionate article, the rest of the tech press is trumpeting the new layout as if they’re on Google’s payroll. I really question their veracity.
The new Google News is a complete and utter mess. I am a content writer and I have been using Google News for years to scan the latest news on various topics every morning – but I will now urgently have to find something else.
Material Design, METRO, iOS7+ and everything this flat crazyness has brought along with is complete garbage. GARBAGE! It’s the hint of incompetent developers who can’t do more than a sodding square and, sometimes, a drop shadow. On top of it a lot of wasted space.
Good design examples: Windows 7 Aero, Windows Classic, Android 4.x (Holo), iOS6 or lower (but especially 6)
Bad design: Windows 8/10, Android 5+, iOS7+
Up to now I ever hardly visited Google News, with the new design I guess I’m bound to visit this news supermarket even less.
Having items squeezed on a page display is one thing, having them loose is another. I notice a lot of wasted space, articles’ titles displayed as in a supermarket (which is coherent with the very concept of the place), overall impression is that of a third-world supermarket, one of those barely fit one day out of seven.
Not for me.
Am I crazy or is Google thinking it might unkill Google Reader and the RSS? Long live RSS!!! :)
You are crazy.
I opened Google News for the first time today. Apart from the comments made by the other posters about the layout, it seemed to be all hyped up USA news. I have had my fill of pictures of the pouty, sulky, finger pointing “POTUS” and his acolytes having hysterics about fake news !
I will not be tempted to visit the site again. :(
I have been a long time user of customized Google News. My only minor complaint of the new layout so far is in the “Sports score” section where team logos are no longer displayed. For me it makes it harder to find my team visually,
White space is no problem for me on my 1920×1080 screen zoomed to 150%.
Ugly as hell. Do any Google web designers use screens larger than 13 inches?
I don’t know what the fuck they are thinking. Anand Paka should be fired.
Agree!
YUCK
if you had bookmark to specific section (like technology) it no longer works.
news always opens top stories first.
lot of complaints on google forums about it
White space for dummies. New look is fluffy and dumbed down. Content is king, not fluff.
Like TJ I opened for first time today. Did not know it existed. Now i see why. Rubbish! First & last time for me. I do not understand the point of readers anyway. Seems to be just a re-hash of other peoples sites.
Desktop users don’t matter anymore. Google cares more about mobile users that don’t mind scrolling through this POS UI. They fixed something that wasn’t broken and made it much worse.
Which is insane, because there is a Google News app for mobile users. Why mess with the website?
TOTAL disaster.
NO ONE likes it. And Google is ignoring all criticism.
THAT’S the story you should be writing.
A total disaster that no one likes, but the people most responsible for fixing it refuse to accept criticism and do the right thing.
Sounds awfully familiar…
I use a laptop to read Google News, and this new format is a disaster. Instead of multiple news items on a single screen, and the ability to cherry pick competing views, I now see one or two items on my screen. Lots of white space, but white space isn’t news. Major boo-boo, Google!
Flat design is great and all but for some odd reason designers are forgetting that content is king, when you sacrifice content in an attempt to make things more accessible and easier to navigate you’re defeating the whole reason this flat design caught on in the first place.
Agreed. That is the issue for me. Anybody know a good alternative?
They say they want to reduce fake news, but this new design will make it more prevalent. Also, nutcases can filter out the news, so a guy like Trump would only see positive news articles about himself. This is some real 1984 shit.
Worst ever design from Google. Got to check other alternatives. Been a long time Google News user. Bye bye Google News
I’d recommend Alvinet as an alternative to Google News. The concept is similar but the carrying-out is quite different, far more basic yet basic may be more practical than bloated.
Alvinet (French) : [http://www.alvinet.com/]
Alvinet (English) : [http://uk.alvinet.com/]
I’m not fond of news markets but on special occasions, in order to have a wide panorama of sources rather than the smaller scope of my traditional news sites, Alvinet comes in handy.
“I’m not fond of news markets but on special occasions…”, oh luvvie, I hope you can live with the shame. You’re not alone, we’ve all been tempted, but it’s only occasionally. So, you’re not quite the common pleb, there’s still hope for us yet, precious darlings!
“Rupert Denzil Beaumont George”
I’ve never seen a post from you before. With your posting name, you come across as a pretentious and narcissistic plonker . Go away and post again when you’ve thought up a new name, you plank.
“oh luvvie, I hope you can live with the shame.”
“precious darling”
Those phrases make you sound like an effeminate, failed, actor and bitchy with it.
The point of posting is to contribute a comment, for or against, about Martin’s blog. You do not seem to have grasped the idea.
Why did you post your crass comment twice. For more effect ?
I quit their thieving browser years ago but still used the news as my home page. This is the final straw, a 4 year old could’ve done better, good riddance to Google forever.
“I’m not fond of news markets but on special occasions…”, oh luvvie, I hope you can live with the shame. You’re not alone, we’ve all been tempted, but it’s only occasionally. So, you’re not quite the common pleb, there’s still hope for us yet, precious darlings!
LOL! “Special occasions” triggered your exotic rhetoric, didn’t it?! Well, a special occasion would be to find news about “Rupert Denzil Beaumont George” : not sure I’d find much on my usual news sources :)
Tom, read my response to “Rupert Denzil Beaumont George”. I hope I didn’t upset him too much. :)
@Gary D, I hadn’t perceived the comment of ‘Rupert Denzil Beaumont George’ in maybe the way you have. Maybe because I didn’t quite understand his prose. For what I had understood I indeed had in mind exoticism, not too far from that of a dancer; for the rest I imagined a possible dandy. All together it called a laugh and perhaps as well some sympathy. Such declarations as his can be relevant of several things but none IMO to be annoyed by. I don’t know why but after that I had Oscar Wilde in mind and went off to Wikipedia to get my mind refreshed.
Look like I will will have to do a new Userstyle for it soon to be usable again ! :-(
Finally found a place with real opinions about the new Google News look and feel, after all the fluff announcement pieces. It follows almost every other web redesign – the first cut seems to be usually genius, and any mods just for tor the sake of changing automatically goes downhill.
And talk about FAKE NEWS… the first several pages of reviews on Google search mostly rave about it… surely they can’t be that many idiots reviewing it and thinking it’s better… I suspect they were ASKED to say that… if you know what I mean.
Too make it clear, the new Google news SUCKS MORE THAN A SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE!
I suspect the ‘journalists’ have been treated to a very nice weekend somewhere!
The redesign is pretty lackluster for power users. Visually, the card interface is a return to iGoogle’s grid boxes, except it doesn’t maximize the wide spaces on the ubiquitous 23″/1080p or newer 27″/1400p monitors. Meh.
I get it that Google wants to maintain footholds in both desktop & mobile markets, but their screen sizes are too different for responsive web layouts to find common ground with. Smartphones may be everywhere but, if anything, desktops & laptops are outlasting tablets here in high-tech Asia countries (4G LTE sets have long lost favor; Wifi-Only sets aren’t as connectable) so traditional business & power users are getting the short shrift.
Terrible!!! I want a quick overview of what’s happening in the world and the old interface showed me … maybe 20 headlines and a line from a few different sources. The new interface showed me TWO. I’ve changed my ‘news’ bookmark to BBC news. Such a shame Google has gone for style over substance.
Like many others, I have used Google News as a customized news space that was vital to my work in addition to providing current affairs and entertainment news. This redesign has negated everything I valued in the old layout. I am a super fast reader and my only complaint about the old layout is that there was TOO MUCH white space. I would have eliminated the left column entirely to squeeze more text onto the page. I need a customizable aggregator, not a feed. Does anyone have a suggestion?
As I mentioned above, there is Alvinet :
Alvinet (French) : [http://www.alvinet.com/]
Alvinet (English) : [http://uk.alvinet.com/]
Also, NewsNow at [http://www.newsnow.co.uk/], but you probably know these already especially NewsNow.
Bing News, Yahoo! News as well, but not customizable if I remember correctly.
As always nowadays it’s less finding what we search for than finding the gem nested somewhere in the jungle.
Side-note : nice pseudo!
Checked out uk.alvinet.com and don’t see how to customize. When I click on Buzz or More Read I get a “sorry can’t do that” message in French.
Are you a botanist?
Looks like the English pages of Alvinet are problematic (I use the French pages). Foreign languages is really not a major concern in France, it’s changing but slowly and when it comes to Websites offering an English version which is not correctly crafted it’s more than ever flagrant.
I stated ‘Papa Somniferum’ as a nice pseudo because I had ‘Papa’ in mind and ‘Somniferum’ got me to imagine a sleepy old daddy :) I am soooo… uneducated, but curious and Wikipedia enlightened me on “Papaver somniferum, the opium poppy” :) — You learn every day, even with pseudos!
After years of Google News I’ve now had to find an alternative. The best I’ve found so far is newslookup.com.
Just had a first glimpse at newwslookup. Thanks for the info. Might interest Papa Somniferum as well.
ive switched to bing news, google news in a bugger to navigate now, i might ditch google the same as i ditched windows when 10 came out :(
New Google news layout is significantly worse that the previous layout.
A big reduction in the number of news feeds for users to select and news shown is GOOGLE orientated.
It will lead me to look for other sources
Please GOOGLE go back to previous user friendly webpage layout
read their page all the time, even in between the lines, when necessary.
sent them a email, within 30 minutes of the new format hitting the web. why is it that some people don’t have a clue about what making it better really means. this has to have come from some 20’s something IT people, that don’t have a clue what better means.
they are so young, I bet they don’t even know what “counter-clockwise” means since they are nothing but digital.
BYE google.
Digg reader best alternative by far. I compiled a list of RSS feeds which can be imported into any RSS reader. Quiet Reader is good. Download this file from github. https://gist.github.com/jlitz/24d21ce0888cd4896165595ba72af37e and import it. Enjoy!
You can add any rss feed or convert any website into a feed using https://habilis.net/dailyfeed/
Such a shame. I liked the previous Google News as it was easy to see related stories on a topic at a glance. Now? Lots of clicking and scrolling to get less.
Switching back to Feedly…where I went when Google kills their reader.
terrible design, also the search seems broken, when I search for anything on the main page nothing happens just reloads main headlines page WTFF #Google?
Can’t actually search at all no matte which browser I use.
It wasn’t broken #Google why TF did you “fix” it?
no more google for me….. bye bye, spread the word….
http://www.inoreader.com/ Been exploring RSS feeds. This appears to be the best so far. Much better than google news. easily customizable from preferences/bundles. or import xml file. here is mine https://gist.github.com/jlitz/bc4f238fed247c81f27608d3560c52a8
Absolutely, hate the new look,,, what a complete waste of space!
Will give Bing News a try.
To say this new look sucks is an under-statement, so much less information.
Does ANYONE like it, did they do ANY market research???
And it defaults to US news no matter where you are in the world.
I noticed that the good version of Google News still worked (for now) on my iPad.
On my PC with the 3840×2160 monitor, I had to install the User Agent Switcher plugin into Firefox, then download the extended list of User Agents from http://techpatterns.com/downloads/firefox/useragentswitcher.xml. Restart Firefox, and look under Tools->User Agents->Mobile Devices->OS->iOS->iOS 4_2_1 iPad Safari 533 and presto! Got the good Google News back, just like on my iPad.
This shows that Google’s apologies are entirely bogus. They KNOW how to make the old one work for us, they are just refusing to do so because they control the interface.
There’s probably a way to do this with Chrome as well, but why would you trust any other Google display product after they screw you with a bad Google News UI?
I tried that and it doesn’t work for me. Maybe because I am using Firefox ESR on Linux. ???
Bing News looks like a knockoff of the old Google News. Good enough for now
This is the worst!
Really, really poor. I want to see news, not whitespace. Clearly “designed” by someone who cares more about appearance than content. Thanks for hints for Bing News, Newslookup, and fix–sorry Google but gotta go! You lose.
New format is shit.
Found this from somewhere else, but slick as baby oil it works for me.
1. Download extension User-Agent Switch – add to Chrome or Citrio
2. Right Click the Icon and Go to Options
3. Click Permanent Spoof List and add news.google.com or dot whatever
4. Set User-Agent String to Windows Phone> Windows Phone 8
BAM!
I am not one of those that always complaining and want the old format. Usually new format brings better interaction once you get the hang of it. But not in this case. A lot of things are missing (number of sources, preview of 1st line, change to other editions, etc), and not a single thing of improvement. The new look sucks big time.
I have used Google News as my browser homepage for years…..fast, clear and packed with content at a glance.
This new version is terrible. It might be time to say goodbye to google news and look elsewhere.
I have been coding for a little over half a century. This change is pitiful. Using 4K 28 inch and a couple of others. This uses up far too much screen space, just for starters. Scroll Fantastic is not my favourite App. I much prefer Visual Reading, not Graphical Seething(s). I currently do Brain Mapping. Somebody(s) needs their brain(s) remapped…
you got several choices. use bing sorta like the old google news —– yu can use an rss reader i like inoreader —– you can set up your own blogger page with feeds using feedburner, feedwind or use icoreader html links—— you can use tweetdeck and customize it to news feeds
Sorry Google, I’ll be using another news site from now. This is not an improvement.
Sodding thing now defaults to US rather than UK edition and will not remember any local feeds I set. Also have to close the expanded view of the first article every time I load the site.
I wonder if they showed it to any users before inflicting it on the wider world?
New interface makes it many times harder to quickly scan the news. Double-column layout is gone and fewer than half the number of articles appear. Massive endless scrolling (i.e. painful repetitive stress injury and aching mouse hand) is required to find what could formerly be seen in a quick glance. Descriptions under headlines are gone, further reducing information content, so there’s no way to judge beforehand whether you want to commit to a click or not. The clean lines and simplicity are good — but they threw the baby (i.e., the news) out with the bathwater. New interface strips away content, further contributes to the dumbing down of America. In this era of fake news, what a terrible decision!!
Sucky new layout. I’ve stopped going to Google News at all.
How much more screen real estate do you really need to take over at the top with the new Google News redesign? You just made the site incredibly worse, forcing me to scroll more to read less news.
truly awful in every way. thanks, google. changing my homepage for the first time in years.
At last I’ve found others who are as displeased as I at losing Google’s two column news layout which, with its glut of headers and sub-headers, was so informative. Delightful too, in the sense that, daily, it was a real case of eeny-meeny-miny-mo as to which source to click for a particular item to read: ‘spoiled for choice’ in fact. Not particularly pretty but wonderfully functional.
The new look, admittedly is clean and attractive but, superficial, laborious and far less informative: a rare example of the ‘less-is-more’ ethos not necessarily delivering the goods. I suspect its creation might be the result of a new hire at Google eager to earn its keep.
Just had a look at a few of the links from this thread and, living in the UK, I’d suppose NewsNow to be the closest to what G’s News was. Ugly as heck, nowhere near as varied, but two columns of concise headers. But, nonetheless, still irked at Google losing the plot.
Odd, but I’m glad that the superb older Google News format is still displayed on my Google based tablet. Furthermore, unlike the god-awful new version, that incarnation actually remembers my locality. However, I only use my tablet for business travel.
I suspect the white waste-of-space that we’re all unhappy about will ultimately be used for advertising. It won’t matter to me though. I removed Google News as my homepage, and only check back now and then to see if Google has come to its senses, and abandoned this new fangled f***** up format.
It’s a pity. I’m using Bing News now as my homepage, and it’s not too bad, but as far as I’m concerned, the Bing search engine just isn’t as useful as Google. Still, it’s more convenient most of the time with its location right on top of their news feed.
Once again, tech companies have to change for the sake of change. All those little 20 something MBA’s have to earn their money is the mantra. Hey, let’s change to a design that looks like an unfinished index and table of contents and slap it on some cards and use tons of whitespace. Sounds synergistastic! High fives and free trade, organic double mocha lattes all around.
Yahoo went through this in the 2000’s, changing it’s interface every 6 months for 5 straight years. Wonder why people quit ’em? (Search returned idiotic result after the first 5 returns were ads is prob the main reason, but still)
It’s horrible. I wrote google and have only been back once, by habit, to the new horrible, unwieldy, ugly, invasive, ignorant idle techy with nothing to do looking site.
Thanks,
Horrible. Barely works at all. Can’t see top or bottom of page, can scroll through middle section slowly. Search box didn’t work at all. Clicking into each section showed a few more articles, but couldn’t find any link to a second page of results, so is it only the one page worth? But the search box being useless is the big one.
I wouldn’t care what it looked like if it worked.
This whole design ideal that less is more is stupid. So much wasted space one has to wonder what Google designed this on? Certainly you would not be happy on a 11.6″ Chromebrook or any other smaller notebook. The graphics mean so little and they have basically limited text so much you can’t even get a feel for story. Its all based on headlines which we all know are click bait typically. Can’t tell from a headline how good a story is. Maybe that’s Google’s angle to get users to visit more pages, which means more ads, and more Google revenue?
Many here I’m sure have justifiable complaints about the new Google News, but it works well for me on my laptop. My customized alerts still work, I have no excess white space as I have the font customized with the easy to read DejaVu font, and sized for my not so great vision. The Change Colors Chrome extension is customized for color choices I prefer. My screen size is 1920*1080 and looks great for the new Google News. As I’ve said before, my customized sports display doesn’t show the team logo anymore, but I suspect I can fix that; it’s there using IE11.
Desktop was OK. Now ugly and useless.
About 8 years ago was great, but has been dumbing down ever since.
Don’t use it any more.
However, mobile version OK.
It looks like almost everybody agrees that the new format for Google news is useless.
I too find the new format a wast of space. My monitor set to 1920×1080 is a sea of white when reading google news.
This is really unfortunate that the Google people do not understand the principle of “if it ain’t broke don’t FIX it”.
I may be missing an important fact, but for me Google News looks great on my 1920×1080 screen using latest Chrome x64 beta on Windows 10 x64 Home. I view it zoomed at 150%.
Too much whitespace (and I like whitespace). Also buggy. Under firefox/ubuntu/desktop mouse scrolling actually feels like going to the gym (a real work out to get the [email protected]#$ page to scroll down). Sad automated testing didn’t find such details from their devops groups… and you’d think google knows devops???
The new google news sucks. It is meant to tell us what to read, rather than act as a neutral news search engine. On that basis, I will no longer use it.
I’ll find something else, outside of google to aggregate news (in a neutral way) for me.
someone redid the old news site https://news.google.com/news/feeds?output=rss&q=%