Google said last week at its I/O developer conference that the revamped, artificial intelligence-powered Google News would be arriving on Apple’s App Store some time in the next seven days. That time is apparently now, as the new Google News has gone live on iOS this afternoon and replaced the old Google Play Newsstand app. You can find the iOS link here. In the event you’re looking for already-live Android version on the Play Store, you can find that here.
The new Google News on iOS is similar to the one you’ll find on Android. It centers around using machine learning to train algorithms to comb through complex, fast-breaking news stories and break them down in easy-to-understand formats like chronological timelines, local news aggregation, and stories presented in a developing and evolving sequence.
The app is now organized into four sections. The first is a “For You” personalized list of the top five stories Google’s software thinks you’ll want to read alongside a few other algorithmically chosen articles and local news stories. The next section is simply labelled “Headlines,” and it’s a mix of the latest news across sections like, “U.S.,” “World,” “Business,” and “Tech.” You can also use this section to see Google’s new Full Coverage feature that breaks down more complex stories into a series of articles from a variety of sources alongside social media posts from Twitter and YouTube.
There’s now a favorites section for starring topics across entertainment, news, and academia. The section is also good for selecting your preferred news sources, saving stories for Pocket-style reading later, and saving location and text-based searches for looking up later.
The last section, Newsstand, is a new addition to this version of Google News that lets you subscribe to news organizations who either offer a monthly subscription for web / print access or charge a monthly fee to bypass a web paywall. Selecting individual media organizations opens up a new splashy page for each one that organizes a source’s stories into site-specific coverage areas. Organizations found in Newsstand all support the Google AMP standard, meaning the pages will load in quick and clean fashion without bouncing you first through a mobile browser.
