Why Does Google News Disappoint?

[bcholmes]

Google does a lot of neat stuff. So much really nifty stuff. There are so many cool features in Google Maps alone that I'm in awe of their tech skills. Google Books. Google Language Tools. Incredible tools. I don't even use many of the Google apps. I don't have GMail, and I seldom use Google Docs. But they really seem to know what they're doing.

So why is that Google News is such a big disappointment? They use all that data mining to figure out so many interesting things, but they can't even figure out what news I like to read?

I mean, I've already personalized my Google News page. I've got "Top Stories", "World", "Toronto, ON", "Haiti News", "Canada", "Business", "Sci/Tech", "Health" and "More Top Stories". Note two things I've explicitly told Google News: I don't care about the Entertainment or Sports sections. DON'T CARE!

The "Toronto, ON" section was added when I selected the "local news" option. I'd guess that 90% of the stories that appear there are about sports teams. Here's what it looks like on my screen, right now:

Two out of three stories are sports-related. It's like all they do is look for the word, Toronto, and, surprise, stories involving the Toronto Rapters, Toronto Blue Jays, Toronto Argonauts, and Toronto Maple Leafs are the ones they usually find.

Then there's that little "In the News" section. Here's what it looks like, for me:

Let's see. Grigorieva and Gibson. I'd guess that these stories usually appear in the Entertainment section (although I do read the articles on, say, Feministing, on Gibson). Blue Jays, Villeneuve, Canadian Open and Mike Weir. Sports. Personally, I'd put Guitar Hero in Entertainment, but I sometimes see software-related articles in Sci/Tech.

C'mon, Google. I expect so much better of you.