Revamped Google News Following tab feels like a customizable Discover

Abner Li | Oct 24 2023 - 2:00 pm PT

Recently, I’ve been using Google News a bit more because of the customizable Following tab that feels like a cross between Google Reader of old and today’s Google Discover.

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My previous lack of Google News usage — compared to other people — is related to how I primarily find articles through social media, which included following various publications’ Twitter (when it was called that) accounts. I’m a reverse-chronological timeline completionist and used Google Reader/RSS in a similar manner. It’s a strict way to control the sourcing that’s not possible with the Google News “For you” tab, which dates back to the 2018 overhaul that was big enough to receive an on-stage I/O announcement.

Back in August, Google News rolled out an updated “Following” tab that shows your chosen publications (known as “Sources”), topics (like world, tech, etc.), and cities as individual cards with three stories each. The articles that appear are chosen by ranking algorithms, with topics and cities featuring content from varying publications. How the cards are ordered is also not controlled by the user, but I’m willing to hand over those choices in this narrow context to algorithmic curation. In fact, I’m finding the Google News picks for those topic cards to be interesting and relevant enough to increase my trust in the algorithm.

I find myself increasingly opening Google News for this Following tab to get an overview from the sites I really care about. It’s nothing like RSS in that three stories is far from a firehose of content, but it’s a pretty nice recap that’s highly glanceable and relevant since I choose everything, as well as fast to consume even with over a dozen cards.

Honestly, I wish this was the Discover feed to the left of the Pixel Launcher or, at the very least, a homescreen widget to complement the current one that provides headlines. Yes, I’m somebody that likes Google Discover because it does surface content that’s highly relevant to me at times. You’d think that the lack of control over what sources appear might turn me off, but I don’t go to Discover for news. My perusal of that particular feed is more casual and laid back. As an avid user, I have noticed it getting worse over the years with more ads and non-news/article content (like Shorts) appearing, but I still find interesting stuff, which is ultimately the benchmark.

All this is to say that this quiet addition of a Following tab to Google News, which has rolled out on Android and is eventually coming to iOS (no word on the web app), is quite interesting and could be an interesting foundation.