Google has officially rolled out Google Feed in both its iOS and Android Apps. Like Facebook and Twitter news feeds, Google’s feed is a personalized stream of content based on you–with a twist.
Feed replaces Google Now, an intelligent personal assistant that was launched at Google I/O in June 2012. Google feed is basically an improved version of Google Now with a better UI and more features.
Here’s what Google Now was aiming to do in 2012.
Today’s Google Feed is Much Different
Google Feed uses your search and Chrome browsing history to curate the top stories, videos, and other content for the day. A little extra wrinkle here is that Google Feed will also look into your Google Calendar and even consult Google Assistant to find out what you’ve been interested in lately.
Users also have the option to follow and unfollow topics to refine their feed.
After testing feed ourselves, we found that the content in the feed was surprisingly relevant.
One thing we noticed was a large absence of video content. In fact, only one YouTube video popped up in our feed. This is particularly surprising considering the growing popularity of video content on Facebook and other social media. Zuckerberg has even said that video is the future of content.
Google Feed doesn't rely on your friends for relevant contentClick To TweetWith Feed, Google hopes to become one of the go-to places for content like Facebook and Twitter.
Shift in Content From External to Internal Motivations
Unlike Facebook and most other successful social media platforms, feed doesn’t rely on your friends for content. This means you get the content you really care about minus the noise of dealing with that one friend who posts PewDiePie videos all day.
No friend content and few videos? What is Google playing at? Perhaps by defying everything that has made Facebook successful will finally allow Google social media to catch up.
We’re skeptical, but there is one bonus.
No Ads
Google says we won’t be seeing any ads in our feed for now. This is particularly ambitious considering that Google is a well-known ad company. We believe it won’t be long before we start seeing ads in our feed.
Google feed is available only on the mobile apps for now. Google plans to introduce it to the web and mobile soon.
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