Google has abandoned Google News?
Google’s news search and Google News are increasingly seen as unreliable, with users reporting broken date filters, irrelevant or foreign-language results, and opaque ranking that appears optimized for engagement and ads rather than precision. Many commenters frame this as part of a broader “enshittification” of Google and other tech platforms, where once-useful, quasi-public services are neglected or reshaped to serve short‑term growth, prompting power users to seek alternatives like Kagi, Ground News, and custom or nonprofit aggregators.
Google News / Search Functionality Problems
- Multiple commenters report that Google’s “News” mode and date filters (e.g., “past week,” “past year”) often ignore constraints and surface much older articles.
- Some see large numbers of social media posts, foreign-language content, or foreign outlets despite specifying US sources or language.
- Others attempt to reproduce the issues and say filters work for them, questioning how widespread the problem is and criticizing the lack of detailed, uncropped evidence.
- Several note a distinction between the Google Search “News” tab and the dedicated news.google.com site; the article’s screenshot appears to show the former.
- There is confusion about pagination behavior: some say Google drops filters on later result pages (with a banner), while others don’t see such banners but still observe out-of-range results.
Evidence of Regressions in Search
- Commenters cite difficulty retrieving older coverage (e.g., Ceuta 2021, older Guardian articles) even with explicit date filters, while alternative engines (DuckDuckGo, Kagi) succeed.
- Other long-standing search tools—exact-phrase quotes, advanced date range selection—are reported as degraded or missing.
- Similar date-filter issues are said to appear across non-news searches as well.
Alternatives and Workarounds
- Kagi is frequently praised as a paid search alternative; some say they’ve largely abandoned Google Search for it.
- Other suggestions: Ground News (bias-aware aggregator), LexisNexis (paid, pro-grade), specialized search sites, Ecosia’s news tab, forth.news, Marginalia, and memeorandum.
- Some note these don’t fully satisfy professional needs for highly specific, comprehensive, US-only coverage.
Perceived Enshittification of Google and Big Tech
- Many see Google News/Search as part of a broader decline: products like Google Finance, Books, YouTube, Maps, and even core search are described as cluttered with AI, ads, and “engagement” features.
- Fuzzy, non-strict search is viewed as intentional, to prolong user time on platform and maximize ad impressions.
- Commenters tie this to “data-driven” short-termism, growth-at-all-costs, and MBA/metrics culture.
Broader Reflections
- Some frame this as systemic: monopolies, weak regulation, and incentives for value extraction over service quality.
- Others argue for non-profit, open-protocol, or public-good approaches as more robust ways to provide critical information infrastructure like news aggregation and search.