Google has altered the UI for their Feed/Discover repeatedly over the last 5 years, however the latest update hearkens back a few of them to when it was better anyway.
Google first introduced ‘Now' back in 2012 and has since acted as a great little hub for many changing things including reminders, updates, events, and always news.
However Google has never really been happy with it; rolling out UI overhauls every few years, Google had been more-or-less improving it for ages until it rebranded it as ‘Discover' last year and redesigned a lot of the UI by removing the classic, functional, and smart ‘cards' which could be swiped away to an ugly, space-wasting, and frankly stupid gradiented list of articles and their topics in ‘bubbles'. (They also started suggesting news articles from years ago which is incredibly useless and frustrating).
Well, Google has finally realised that they actually got the UI right the first time and is going back to basics with pretty, compact, and useful cards as in the thumbnail.
On top of being far more compact by removing the stupid topic bubbles – which were added so users could easily reach topics and is now gone, which some may miss – the UI has been tweaked by moving the overflow vertical ellipses button from the top right to the bottom right, beside the more/less button.
Also, the top of the Discover feed has replaced the settings vertical ellipses with the user icon and has moved the Updates button to the left and also added a label (why?).
I'm very glad that Google has finally come to their senses and realised how dumb the ugly gradiented topic bubbles UI is – they probably realised few people actually use it.
Unfortunately, as with most things Google, it's a server-side change and so we'll all just have to wait to individually receive the nicer UI.
Source and image: Android Police
I hope this is a major overhaul. I loved Google Now. It was actually relevant to the things I searched for. Ever since it was rebranded to Discover, it has gotten worse and worse. I routinely receive articles that are in a language I don’t speak/read, get updates about NCAA players, coaches and teams and I don’t watch or follow any of it and (my favorite) news on political figures from other countries…and I don’t even follow politics in my own country. Don’t get me started on the “in case you missed it” crap.
In its current state, Discover is about 85% useless.
Yep, it’s unfortunate just how bad it is – it won’t stop giving me Indian news (I am Australian) haha.
I so miss the Google Now of 2015-era, it looked great, worked perfectly, and gave me useful information – and even more useful stuff than just the news that Discover gives (like calender events, cinema tickets, etc…)