Microsoft released a brand new news app just after Google poured its news features into an app as well. Which one should you use?
Microsoft News now available
Microsoft, Google and Apple now all have their own app that bundles the most important news for you. However, Apple News is (still) not available in the Netherlands and therefore less relevant for Dutch iPhone users.
Microsoft chooses to convert the outdated MSN News into Microsoft News, an app that basically does the same as Google’s new app. When you start the application for the first time, you indicate what your interests are, and then the app selects the news that is relevant to you every day.
This is all done through machine learning, which analyzes and assesses more than 100,000 news articles per day based on topic, popularity and current affairs. In addition, there is a global team of 800 curators who manually select the top stories and serve them to you. In the Netherlands, the app uses numerous major news media such as NU.nl, ANP and RTL Nieuws.
The app itself is well put together. You can turn on notifications to be kept informed of Breaking News, a handy widget gives you a quick glance at the latest news and Microsoft has added a dark mode for the evening hours. It is also nice that the next article is already loaded, when you have finished reading and you can just scroll through to continue.
Better than Google News?
The biggest obstacle for Microsoft News is, therefore, that Google recently released its own News app, which, in our opinion, is better put together. Google News starts with a ‘For You’ screen where you see the weather forecast, a top five stories and Instagram Story-like photos of the most important events.
That makes Google News more suitable to read on your iPhone or iPad, while Microsoft News mainly feels like a good, but relatively simple way to read articles from the internet in an app.