Amid intense debate over fake news and how it’s spread using social networks and other online tools, a report claims that Google is planning to remove the “In The News” section from the top of its desktop search results. The report claims that this change is going to be made in a couple of weeks from now. Google is said to replace this section with “Top stories,” similar to what users on mobile see.
Citing a source familiar with the matter, Business Insider reports that Google is going to remove its “In The News” section from the top of desktop search results in a few weeks. The report adds that Google is going to replace it with a carousel of “Top stores” that’s currently displayed on mobile.
Apparently, the idea here is to remove the word “news” so that there’s a greater distinction between Google’s main search tool which is primarily powered by algorithms and its Google News tool which has human curators doing the heavy lifting.
Google has been taking steps to counter the spread of fake news online. The company has already said that it’s going to ban websites that spread fake news from its advertising network which is often the primary source of revenue for most websites.
Google hasn’t confirmed or denied the report yet so it can’t really be said for sure right now if and when this is going to happen.
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