Back in 2011, Google News launched badges and sharable sections - an idea I was not too fond of - but who am I? In any event, it allowed you to create your own news section based on various keywords, news sources and sliders and then share them with your friends.
Here is how it kind of worked:
But Google killed it off quietly last week.
Elena from Google announced it several days after in the Google News Help forums, "Google News turned off the functionality to create shareable sections on Jan. 23, 2017." She shared what changes you can expect with this change:
- Your current shared sections will be migrated into custom sections and may have disappeared momentarily.
- After migration, your shared sections will reappear in the left-hand navigation area on the homepage. Note that when you visit your section page you may see your query in the title bar instead of your section name.
- This is a known issue and the team is working to restore the original name of your sections.
"It was a tough decision, but we decided to sunset the shareable sections feature in order to focus our resources on improving the overall Google News user experience," Elena added.
Forum discussion at Google News Help.
