Google Tests Removing the News Tab From Search Results (niemanlab.org) 37
An anonymous reader shares a report: News publishers are worried -- with good reason -- about changes coming to Google Search. AI-generated content replacing links on some of the most valuable space on the internet, in particular, has left media types with a lot of questions, starting with "is this going to be a traffic-destroying nightmare?" The News filter disappearing from Google search results for some users this week won't help publishers sleep any easier. Google confirmed some users were not seeing the News filter as part of ongoing testing. "We're testing different ways to show filters on Search and as a result, a small subset of users were temporarily unable to access some of them," a Google spokesperson confirmed via email.
I Tested... (Score:3)
...removing Google from my browser search choices.
I found that I did not miss it one bit.
I agree (Score:2)
...removing Google from my browser search choices.
I found that I did not miss it one bit.
Gah! I have to agree. I did the canonical A/B test with Google and DuckDuckGo, and found that there's no good solution.
I had heard that Google was getting pretty bad, so switched to DuckDuckGo. I found that google's search was much better for technical things, if you ask a direct technical question on google you'll be sent to StackExchange or Reddit or Quora or somewhere with a direct answer. Not as much with DuckDuckGo. I kept using DuckDuckGo but frequently re-searching on Google for technical questions,
If not using Google, you're probably using Bing (Score:2)
DuckDuckGo isn't as politically biased as Google, either.
[...]
Does anyone know if yahoo still working?
Last I checked, both DuckDuckGo and Yahoo were mostly syndicating Bing results.
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I also performed this test (Brave, Duck Duck Go, Bing, Google) but my test had very different results from yours. In my testing, Google's results were an order of magnitude better quality than any of the others. This is especially true when searching for something local, or when asking questions.
I use Brave search (Score:2, Interesting)
Wasted space anyway (Score:2)
It's all copy pasta main stream news with no serious analysis, no background, no follow up, and insufficient detail to figure out what happened or why.
Or you can click through to a video where you get the same paper thin nonsense without the benefit of skimming through the noise.
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By removing the news filter, then they can't be accused of spreading "fake news". It's probably their first motivation since their AI might not be able to tell the difference and might invent stories looking like news. Solution: Remove the news filter.
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Quite likely, good call.
I just want the Maps tag back (Score:1)
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They could do so much with Maps. It's a tragedy that they mostly seem to ignore it, other than changing the colours now and then.
Re: I just want the Maps tag back (Score:2)
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Feature wise some better custom maps would be very welcome. Usability wise I'm convinced nobody at Google has ever tried to use the pubic transport and walking modes because the zoom resetting is extremely annoying.
Serves news companies right (Score:3)
Legacy media is increasingly irrelevant. (Score:5, Insightful)
Normal people are tuning out. Personally, if it is reported by the mainstream org, I assume it is intentionally designed as manipulation. Take the recent Russian Space Nukes FUD, turns out this is a) concept stage b) was not a secret, as Russians put out pressers talking about it. So what all of that is about? Substack and Breaking Points (independent news) quickly informs me this is about re-authorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
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I'm the opposite. I google news and if the only results are NYP, Daily Mail, Fox, and some YouTube videos, I know it's BS.
The News tab just gives you a bunch of irrelevant crap from random orgs you have never heard of, and have no idea if you can trust. Regular search will turn up higher quality sources, or reveal the lack of them.
Re:Legacy media is increasingly irrelevant. (Score:4, Insightful)
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The problem with this conspiracy theory is that if Google search was in fact "captured", it wouldn't return results from sites like the NYP, Daily Heil, and so on. It would favour "woke" sites, i.e. any news outlet to the political left of Hitler. In fact, when a story is true, it returns a mixture of sources from over the spectrum, and often the more neutral ones are not the very top result.
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Got a non paywalled version?
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Okay, so there are two obvious flaws in this argument.
1. The article claims that Google tries to hide information that is bad for big businesses. Some of the biggest businesses in the world are the shitty far right newspapers like the Daily Mail, and Fox News. The Murdoch media empire. So clearly hiding them would be bad for big business, not help it.
2. The right keeps claiming that if you go woke, you go broke, so if Google was trying to hide information harmful to big businesses it would not be promoting
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Some of these priorities are ideological and politically driven and are the result of agendas of powerful individuals within Google.
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Of course Google manipulates search results. That's what makes it good.
Older search engines were crap, they just gave you an unordered database dump.
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Of course Google manipulates search results. That's what makes it good.
Good at pushing your side's political agenda? Yes, it is. However, Google is overdoing this to the point where you have a huge gap in knowledge.
For example, in our recent conversation about Hunter Biden's laptop you acted surprised that FBI was forced to admit they knew it was real [washingtonexaminer.com]. How come none of your searches produced that information?
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No I didn't. I pointed out that they looked at it, and nothing came of it, and the whistleblower who claimed there was something going on in Ukraine is now being investigated for lying to the FBI.
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Exactly. I look at the news sources, and when something seems too good or too bad (left or right), I start looking at
The Plan (Score:4, Funny)
1. Google puts a "News" tab on search page linking to news outlets.
2. News outlets demand compensation for these links.
3. AI arrives. Google says, "We'll just have AI write our news."
4. ???
5. Profit!
Well that explains it (Score:2)
Last night I attempted to search using Google for a particular topic specifically because I wanted recent news about it. I was baffled when there was no News tab to be found. In at least this case the lack of a News tab was a loss.
To those complaining about the uselessness of Google's News section, I've found that it helps a lot to click through Google's options to "Hide all stories from [wherever]", and "[More|Fewer] stories like this". I swear, you click on one story about some historic bauble Kate Mid
I don't use a button (Score:3)
I go to news.google.com. Thankfully, they haven't turned this off.
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That's useful on my phone, but getting less so every day as they force feed me stuff from outfits that paid to be there and that cannot be "don't show"ed.
Blame canada (Score:2)
it comes in handy (Score:2)
I use the news tab all the time during a search. What I like about it is it does not have all the google sponsored ads and youtube videos in it and just give news about whatever I am looking for. Nothing worse than doing a serious search about something and having to scroll pass all the sponsored ads and youtube videos about the subject. I just want something to read, not to interrupt music or audiobook that is already playing in another tab. It is not to say it stops all of it, there will still b
RIP google search (Score:2)
Perplexity tells me what I want to know. Google no longer does.