Google News redesign fails as spectacular as its attempt to borrow a background image feature from Bing. Google News support forums are filled with furious users crying for rollback to the old design or suggesting alternatives. Almost 90% of redesign feedback for testing beta version was negative. So why Google decided to go live with it? Some already say that the Google News redesign is a repeat of The Coca-Cola Company’s New Coke disaster in 1985. The irony is that Google claims that Google news redesign makes it more adequate to users’ interests.
What’s wrong with the redesigned Google News?
Wasted screen space the new one column layout makes you scroll down endlessly and is uncomfortable for the eyes, while the old one used the space sparely and as the standard for newspapers for almost 100 years had most obvious flow.
Hard to skim headlines are not emphasized in bold except in the top section, each news story has four different colors which leads to wasted time and confusion if you just want to skim headlines.
Less customizable layout while Google claims that the new interface is more customizable many users are upset about permanent blocks such as weather, sports or anything in the right-hand column impossible to hide or move.
Annoying News for you quiz there’s a suggestion to set the preference every time you open the Google news.
Annoying mouse-rollovers when you just hover your mouse to choose a link to click the main headline slides down to open more links.
Unusable Google fast flip seeing 1/4 of a web page in a little box is pointless.
Absurd News for you if I clicked on a crime story today and tomorrow on celebrity gossip doesn’t mean that I’m interested to see only the news on these topics.
To sum it up, if you need to watch a video in order to understand how a web page works, then the web page is poorly designed.
Here’s what people say on Google News redesign support forums:
Google, you guys are killing me. This new design is awful, I want the old design back. I want my news quick, brief, and in two easy to read columns. Now I have to search all over the page. At least let us change it back if we want to!
I canNOT stand this new version of Google news. I had several custom sections set up – and now I get a potpourri of crap that I don’t care about. I loved the previous layout, all my topics organized by section – EVERY SECTION I WANTED APPEARED. Now, it gives me 200 stories that it THINKS I want, and 2 stories from 2 of MY custom sections. I have to click each topic individually to get to MY custom news. Is there a way to get my old layout back? Please, dear Jesus, say there is.
Google was my main news source because it allowed me to quickly scan for items of interest. With the new version I cannot do that. If I cannot revert to the old style, I too will be walking away.
Everyone in the test group fucking hated the update, why did you morons roll it out anyway? Seriously.
Google’s actions are very loud. Despite a lot of criticism of the changes, while in Beta before the changes went Live, they decided to ignore the critics & go Live. Now, they’ve been very loud in ignoring the continued criticism.
Google News alternative
There’s a hope that Google itself can fix the problem by providing an option to use the old layout instead of a new one. If it doesn’t happen here’re some Google News alternatives to try.
Restore Google News Layout Greasemonkey script for Chrome or Firefox.
Bing news
iCurrent
- Image search bookmarklets: easy find high resolution images, free stock photos, news and portraits photos
- Google SketchUp must have tutorials, models and plugins resources
- Google will use Image PageRank to improve image search
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“Prettier” – just the right shade of “baby blue” – all fancy and takes 10 times longer to load and is 10 times more annoying. The larger the software company, the more arrogant — micro$$$oft, yahoo, google, ebay, among others. Companies that “change” things for no reason, that change a long-time familiar known interface because of bored managers and developers, not because of user request. When a company has become large and arrogant and non-listening it takes awhile for it to crash. It’s time that people get informed and speak up. You don’t have to tolerate it – speak up.