Tech giant Google removes 'Your News Update' feature from its Assistant; Reports

Google has decided to remove the "Your News Update" feature from its Assistants, reports Verge. As per the reports, Google has not revealed the reason behind its decision to ditch this particular feature. Nevertheless, Google Assistant’s feature of the original news digest option is still available, hence the users will still get personalised news updates.

The feature of “Your News Update” has been available since its launch in 2019. This was an attempt to replicate the algorithmic feed seen on apps like Facebook or other areas of Google's products to audio news. The “Your News Update” heavily relied on the user’s personal data to provide them with more specific and relevant news updates. The updates were selected from a range of partners that Google licenses news from.

Possible reasons for the scrapping of the feature

The Verge further said that such algorithm-based features have an issue that they heavily rely on being very accurate and it is only possible by having access to the daily behaviour on the phone by the user. Another reason could be due to the time-consuming factor as you have to listen through each news story. Users prefer text-based updates. As seen in Google’s algorithmic headline feature, Google’s guesses as per the algorithm in what you are interested in can be awfully inaccurate at times. This feature intended to create a feed of filtered news, but people preferred to search for news they wanted to read themselves or to get updates through texts-based applications. As of now, Google has not officially released a reason behind the scrapping of the feature. Therefore, there’s a high possibility that we may not be informed about the same. Google Assistant still offers its original news digest option, however, so users won’t be left in the lurch, quoted The Verge.

(With ANI inputs)