Google has launched personalized news podcasts that gather audio snippets based on data that the company collects from users, Wired reported.
The service performs in a similar way to auto-generated, personalized music playlists, where the songs come from a person’s preferences.
“We want to expand what podcasting is to include more newsy content that you have to work less hard to find,” says Liz Gannes, product manager for Google News.
“People want to listen where it’s convenient to them,” she said. “That’s why podcasting is blowing up.”
The personalized news aggregation service is called “Your News Update.”
Google’s goal is to make the 90-minute podcast sound similar to a continuous news broadcast, even though it draws from various sources, so that people feel like they are listening to a well-organized presentation of the day’s news.
“It’s a bunch of stories, but we don’t want it to feel like we’re just pulling stuff out of a hat,” said Hannah McBride, a conversation designer at Google.
“So we have this voice that is sort of connecting it all,” she said. “It introduces each topic and, in some cases, will even be really specific about what the story is about. It will guide you through the experience.”
The news update begins with short clips about the day’s top headlines, and then it will transition into longer-form stories.
Google’s news update began last November, but it was limited to simple text-to-speech readings of news articles.
In order to select personalized stories, Google draws from user data, such as location and search history.
The program allows users to choose if they would like their news update to prioritize local stories and sources.
“Local is this incredibly important part of the news experience, and even more so in a news moment where you want to learn more about how the news is directly affecting you,” Gannes sid. “Say, in a pandemic or wildfire, the local version of the news is really what hits close to home.”
