Google’s latest update to its Google News application, formerly known as Google Play Newsstand, bringing consolidation for the company’s news-based offerings and new machine learning features. More specifically, Google News now uses machine learning to surface stories users might be interested in from relevant and reliable sources, categorize the articles, and offer both magazines and video content. However, the company’s newly revitalized interest in A.I. is arguably the biggest new feature. Google utilizes user behavior, including stories that appear to have piqued users’ interests, to determine what users like to read about. From there, the A.I. organizes that news into categories called newscasts while also ensuring that each source is reliable and credible. That will also help users discover new sources they may not have previously considered. Moreover, the system will work to provide context via differing perspectives, a timeline of events, and highlights of other important aspects of a given story.
Looking past those features, this app also rolls in new video and magazine features. That means subscribers to over 1,000 magazines will be able to read their digital subscriptions in-app, in addition to subscribing to new magazines. News videos from the company’s YouTube platform are integrated, as well. So there’s no more navigating back and forth between applications to get deeper insights into what’s going on with a given story. Meanwhile, by putting all the news and magazines users could want under a single app, the app also effectively nullifies the search giant’s previous endeavors in the news app category.
Having said that, it also brings some U.I. updates to make it more consistent with the direction the company is taking with its products’ design. That means it’s a clean-looking app that offers the very best of what’s available from Google in terms of its news offerings and the associated A.I. So, anybody who is interested is probably going to want to check this app out. That’s easy enough to accomplish since Google News can be found via the button below for Android users. The updated app weighs in at just 13M in size and only requires Android 4.4 (KitKat) or newer.
