Tag: Google News

Following up on the release of the Google News app for both Android and iOS, Google has rolled out the Material Design remake of the site for the service today.  With a far cleaner look with improved content visuals, the site matches nicely the new News app for mobile and should be a somewhat seamless experience for users.

Of all the things discussed at Google I/O last week, the revamp of Google News surprisingly took up a lot of digital ink over the course of the week.  In case you did miss it, Google News is more-or-less the replacement for Google Play Newsstand and Google News & Weather.

After being announced last week at Google I/O, the new Google News app is now available in both the Google Play Store for Android users as well as Apple’s App Store for iPhone users.  While the app makes the AI-driven news app available, the Google News site is still hasn’t been updated at the time of this posting.

As you may recall, the new Google News app has an entirely new look and feel, drawing heavily on Material Design for its overall look with lots of visual content for news articles.  It is a far cry from the nearly all text-based version of the old News app.

An interesting rumor has surfaced just days before Google I/O 2018 about the future of Google News and Play Newsstand.  In a post on AdAge, It is reported that News will become the flagship news service for the Mountain View company, integrating video elements and digital magazines into a single app.  It will mean that Play Newsstand, where digital magazines are currently kept in the Google ecosystem, will be deprecated at some point.

The news is interesting as it reflects a broader effort by Google to streamline their app portfolio to be less congested and confusing for consumers.  Taking this news in balance along with the expected revamp of Google Play Music and YouTube, Google is moving more to the “Google” brand and away from the “Play” brand.  This has already happened with the company moving away from “Android” branding products too.

The Google News & Weather app for Android has an update rolling out that brings some tweaks to the overall layout of the app as well as a new, bottom tab style navigation.  The update is version 3.3.1 for those keeping score at home and it is in the Play Store now.  For those who have it installed, expect to see the OTA update over the course of the next few days.

The overall layout of the app has subtile changes and brings the app a bit more inline with the web version of the service that was updated a couple of weeks ago.  You still have the top carousel that allows you to select topics of interest and the articles presented are heavily dependent upon AMP for quick opening.

The bottom navigation has changed however in Google News & Weather significantly – as in, it’s there now.