Sunday, May 6, 2012

Google News updated with deeper Google+ integration


Google News has been updated and now you will be able to see the changes when you access the U.S edition of the page. Google News is designed to provide relevant articles for breaking stories from a variety of sources, be it from local outlets, national or international outlets. Google has updated News to include three new features. The first is an aesthetic update. They've provided larger thumbnail images, which dynamically expand when you click on topics. The second update that Google News has integrated is coverage in real time. Their new real time coverage page is available for every news story as soon as they become available for Google News. So when you go to the real time page, you'll see news articles for the story listed on top with the articles being listed chronologically. Underneath that list of articles, you will see in-depth articles, opinion pieces and highly-cited posts which are listed under their own headlines.


The third update that Google News has integrated, and this is the biggest one, is the addition of Google+ activity to the News page. Google wrote in a blog post, "Many news stories inspire vibrant discussions on Google+, and today we're starting to add this content to both the News homepage, and the realtime coverage pages. This way you can see what your circles, journalists covering the story and notables like politicians or others who are the subjects of stories have to say about breaking news, and even contribute to the discussion directly from Google News."

Google News will bring conversations from your circles, journalists and other 'important' people you might interact with on Google+ to stories presented in Google News. The feature can be turned off as well. Note that you will only be able to see these discussions, if you've signed in to Google+ and you are accessing the U.S edition of Google News. To not have access to Google+ when you're on Google News, all you have to do is either sign out of Google or turn off the display of Google+ posts in the Google News settings page. Google says they're rolling out these features over the next week, so if you can't see them today, don't panic. What do you think of the Google+ integration into the News page? Would you prefer Facebook integration? Let us know in the comments section below.

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