They ran a big experiment, force feeding the redesign to a randomly-selected group of very unlucky people who provided plentiful feedback. All of which was clearly ignored, because it’s the same feedback they’re getting now.

Google’s design process is as broken as BP’s safety engineering process (see the record fine from OSHA the other day?), and the idea that Google is really “being receptive of” users strikes me as contrary to the evidence.

Shuffling deck chairs won’t keep us dry, and minor tweaks won’t convert me back to a Google News user, despite the fact that I used the page dozens of times a day before the redesign.

For now, I’ll just have to stick with breakingnewsfeeds.com

Still looks like crap to me. I’m surprised Google didn’t just change it back considering the amount of complaints they have on their blog.

Why are they trying to force us to read sports and crap that we do not want to see?

It looks like they are trying to program for tiney phones and are ignoring the computer users.

Perhaps this new page was built for android users.

“But the subtle revamp indicates Google’s willingness — a willingness that’s part of its organizational DNA — to tweak its news platform according to the feedback it receives. Guiding users while also being receptive to them: seems a pretty good balance to me.”

Balderdash! Google’s lost whatever “do no evil” DNA it ever had. They tested this redesign, found it universally panned as a bad idea, and forced on the user community anyway!

You’re supposed to be a professional communicator. Please explain how New Google News does a better job of communicating than the old version – because with three decades in the business, I certainly do not see it.

G-News now is like trying to find information in an old Gopher site.

My guess is that Google is intentionally forcing users to do more clicking and mousing (and do so while logged in). With the old format, Google couldn’t monitor how we read news, because we did it by moving our eyes, and they can’t capture that. They can capture the clicks and scrolling. The extra value per user might easily compensate for any drop they might see in market share.

This is how many businesses operate. Print magazines once put their whole index on Page 1. Then they realized they could force users to view more ads if they scattered their index across pages 4 through 10. Some of them probably touted their new design as better for readers while at the same time selling more ads on the front pages at higher prices. Some may have lost some frustrated and longtime readers, yet come out ahead (from a business perspective).