Google News turns 20, gets sleek new look

Google first launched their news aggregator Google News all the way back in September 2002, and since then it’s become the world’s largest news aggregator, used by everyone from students to your parents and just about anyone in between. However, if you happen to head over to Google News today, you might get this pop-up message:

That’s right, Google News has been revamped. According to Google, the new design was inspired by feedback from readers. The goal here is to make it easier for readers to catch up on the latest and most important news for them via the Top stories section. There’s also the Local news section for news happening in your backyard, which has been moved to the top of the page so that you won’t miss out on it. You can add multiple locations to the Local news section too so that you can get the latest updates from the various cities and regions you care about.

On top of that, if you prefer to check on news related to specific topics, you can customise what topics in particular appear on your Google News homepage. This lets you get a quick glance at what’s happening in your particular interests and click on the news stories you want to read. You’ll be able to add, remove and reorder the topics as you like by clicking the blue Customise button on the top right of the Your topics section.

Google has also expanded the Fact Check section in Google News to help readers make better judgements on the information they get online. However, we didn’t see it on our own redesigned Google News page for Malaysia, so perhaps it’s still rolling out in the meantime. Lastly, in conjunction with the redesign, Google News is returning to Spain after an eight-year hiatus following a change in their copyright laws allowing Spanish media to control the way their content can be discovered themselves.

“Google News is available in over 125 countries and 40 languages. Each month, people click through from Google Search and Google News results to publishers’ websites more than 24 billion times.

To help people dive deeper into important stories and more easily find local news from around the world, today we’re launching a redesigned, more customizable Google News experience for desktop,” – Brad Bender, Google VP of Product Management, News

If you’re keen on checking out the new Google News, you can click here to visit it now. Do note though that the new design is currently only on Google News for desktop.