The Google News and Weather application for Android and iOS platforms now has 200 extra headlines to scroll through, offering users far more content in an easy-to-access manner. Located in a new “More Headlines,” section, the additional stories can be found at the base of the app’s home section.
Americans have been consuming their news online more than anywhere else for almost half a decade now and as Google looks to maintain its advertising dominance online, it’s looking to funnel its users to more of its own curated content. Traditionally its News and Weather app showed the top three stories from various sections, but now there’s much more that’s just a scroll away.
“We find that many people regularly hit the bottom of our Home page looking for more to read,” said Google product manager, Anand Paka in a blog post (via Venturebeat).
The “browsable stream,” will contain more stories from various categories, though not necessarily just the biggest stories. They’ll come from Tech, Entertainment, Sports and Business, among others, with the most hard-hitting and popular stories ranked near the top of the list.
With more publishers using the Google-driven Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) standard, we’re told that the stories should load faster than ever and Google will continue to offer alternative sources and citations for different stories and topics.
Google is also making a point of maintaining its fact-checking tag, so you know whether a story has been confirmed by multiple sources.
Although this new feature is likely to be welcomed by Android and iOS users alike, Google has far more competition on the latter operating system. On Android, it’s been said that more than 100 million people regularly read through content on the app.
Do you like the idea of having a couple of hundred extra stories to scroll through?
