14 DAY TRIAL // People have been spotting a significant Google News redesign in the wild for some time now and Google has finally confirmed that it is indeed testing a brand new homepage for its news aggregator service. Interestingly enough, Facebook isn't the only one being inspired by Twitter, it looks like Google liked the trending topics feature so much that it decided to implement a very similar one in News. The trending news stories are prominently displayed in the new Google News layout, just below the Top Stories link but above any of the other menu items.
When asked for comment, a Google spokesperson sent the following statement to a number of publications. “At Google, we run anywhere from 50 to 200 experiments at any given time on our websites all over the world. Right now, we are running a small test of a new Google News homepage design.”
In fact, Google seems to be running several parallel tests at the same time in Google News, as it usually does before launching a new feature or design, as some people are getting just the trending topics section as part of the left sidebar in News, but the rest of the page is unchanged. However, the feature is part of a larger redesign which should be coming to everyone soon enough.
Google News last got a redesign last May, but it was more of a visual upgrade. Now, Google is putting more emphasis on real-time content, unsurprising as it is one of the hottest trends online at the moment. The search engine itself started featuring real-time results from various sources late last year so it's definitely a smart move for Google News as well.
Other than the slightly adjusted focus though, the redesign mostly shuffles things around for a cleaner and more ergonomic layout. Some people have been dissatisfied with the apparent inflexibility of the new design as a user's custom news sections and topics have been moved to the right sidebar. Still, the design isn't final so we'll have to see what Google learns from the tests and what further tweaks are applied before it goes live.
