The Google app for iOS is just that – an app with as much of what Google does as possible. Recently, the Google News Feed within the app has been made even more personal, but how useful is that exactly?
The main focus of the Google app was and still is that you can quickly search for something, whether it is a person, place or image. Just google but in an app and not via Safari or Chrome. In recent years, the app has become increasingly smart by also giving you an overview of, for example, your flight details or departure times of public transport.
Now there is a News Feed that gives you both local and world news, based on your preferences. You can also follow celebrities or movies and series that you Google, so that they end up in your Google News Feed.
The Google news feed
When you open the app for the first time, you will immediately be asked if you want to adjust the Google app to your needs. If you choose this, Google will ask you to access your location and browser history (the latter only applies to those of Google Chrome). Your searches through Google services are also viewed, all to make the Google app smarter.
After that, your personal news overview is ready for use. The News Feed is right below the large search bar that you can google. The feed is filled with, among other things, the weather forecast, any appointments you have in your Gmail or Google Calendar and a lot of news on numerous topics below.
Unclear overview
What you see seems mainly based on websites you have ever visited. And that is exactly where the problem is, because the fact that you have ever read a news item about something does not mean that you want to read about it more often from now on.
The news overview in the Google app will therefore probably become a jumble of useful and completely irrelevant so-called ‘maps’. You can indicate per so-called card that you do not want to see anything from that news source from now on.
You do this by pressing the three dots at the top right of a card. In the menu that then appears, you can also choose ‘Customize the feed’. That sends you to a hefty list of all kinds of topics that you may or may not want to see in your news feed. But that list is just as unclear as the overview itself.
Annoying algorithm
Take the ‘Entertainment’ category for example. It consists of three subcategories: Album, TV updates and Movie updates. Movie updates can be turned off with a simple slider, but with the other two you still have to enter a submenu. What you will find there: also a slide. It seems as if the options menu of the Google app is also composed by an algorithm.
If you turn something off, you don’t know what the effect will be. You should leave something like that to Google’s ‘smart’ algorithm, which keeps asking you repeatedly about which football clubs you want to read news, even after you’ve already ticked three clubs. I am now a supporter of Ajax, PSV and Feyenoord, but I cannot say that I am a big fan of the Google News Feed.
→ Download the Google app from the App Store (free)