Google has disabled a Google News feature that allows personalities featured on the news items to comment on the news stories. When this was announced not so long ago, news media couldn’t quite get the idea behind it. Although it received media coverage for its ingenuity, personalities though didn’t quite like it, well at least based on the low usage of the said feature.
And so, Google probably realized that this is a futile effort at making their Google News service as interactive and social possible, it was then deactivated sometime in May. Unlike the coverage it got when it was launched, Google disabled the feature as quietly as possible.
Quoting official Google statement, Media Decoder reports:
“We’re always experimenting with ways to make Google News more useful, occasionally, this means we have to re-evaluate our efforts to be sure we focus on features that make the most sense for our users.”
What could have gone wrong with this feature? If Google wanted to elicit comments, it should have elicited comments from the users instead of the personalities featured in the news. If you were featured in a news items that runs on Google News, would you even bother commenting on the news item on the site itself?
