Google Announces News Near You Mobile Feature

Hot off the trails of their 600,000x-viewed Keynote at Google I/O earlier this week, Google announced today that Google News is now available for mobile on iPhone and Android.



It's pretty simple: just use the feature in the Google App once and opt in to the location sharing, and Google News does the rest. Above is an example Google provided for someone in Topeka, Kansas. Users should see something similar for wherever they're located (in the US that is). The implications are however, not that simple. Check out ReadWriteWeb's op-ed on how Google might be killing off other hyperlocal news outlets by providing a service that costs Google, well, pretty much nothing.

For more information on the feature and how to us it, try news.google.com, or just start playing around with it on your mobile device Original post below).

Google News for mobile lets you keep up with the latest news, wherever you are. Today we're excited to announce a new feature in the U.S. English edition called "News near you" that surfaces news relevant to the city you're in and surrounding areas.

Location-based news first became available in Google News in 2008, and today there's a local section for just about any city, state or country in the world with coverage from thousands of sources. We do local news a bit differently, analyzing every word in every story to understand what location the news is about and where the source is located.

Now you can find local news on your smartphone. To use this feature, visit Google News from the browser of your Android smartphone or iPhone. If this is the first time you are visiting Google News on your phone since this feature became available, a pop-up will ask you if you want to share your location. If you say yes, news relevant to your location will appear in a new section called "News near you" which will be added at the bottom of the homepage. You can reorganize the sections later via the personalization page.

You can turn off the feature at any time either by hiding the section in your personalization settings or by adjusting your mobile browser settings. Please visit the Help Center for further details.

So, go to news.google.com from your smartphone and get the latest news from wherever you are.


Posted by Navneet Singh, Product Manager, Google News