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Customized News

Announcement
March 10, 2005

Today, Google announced a new feature on Google News that enables users to customize their front page news as they read it. This enhancement represents another important achievement in Google’s ongoing focus to help users find and organize more of the information they want.

When users visit Google News at news.google.com, they will see a box labeled "Customize this page" that offers the following features:

  • Page customization – Users may customize the Google News front page with news sections of their choosing. They can select from 9 available languages and 22 local editions of Google News from around the globe, enabling users to view Google News in a customized global, multilingual format. For example, a user living in London who speaks both English and Japanese may choose to view "Health" news from the UK and "World" news in Japanese.
  • Add custom sections – Users may create their own personal section for the Google News front page by specifying keywords, preferred language, and/or categories from where to draw the stories. For example, users interested in reading news about Google may select [google] as a keyword in the "Technology" category. Newly created sections will also appear in users’ left navigation bar.
  • Section rearrangement – Users may rearrange the sections of the front page they’d like to view. For example, if they’d rather read "Entertainment" news before "Business" news, they may place the Entertainment section toward the top of their customized front page.
  • Number of headlines by section selection – Users may easily modify the number of headlines displayed per news section. (Changing the number of stories in a section will change the alignment of sections on the page.)
  • Show headlines only – Users may also select to view headlines only, without displaying the first sentence of a story nor images. In addition to the "Text Version" that Google News provides, this feature may be helpful for users with non-broadband or slower Internet connections.
  • Share customized news page – Users may share their customized news page with others by clicking on the link at the bottom of their page that reads "Share your customized news with a friend." This feature provides a URL for their current customized page. If users change their customized settings, they will receive a different URL.

We’re excited about the opportunity to be able to offer the customized Google News feature in 9 languages, and we’re exploring opportunities to make the Google News service available in more languages and more countries. More information about Google News can be found at news.google.com.

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