Google News: iPhone vs Android

Google News is a free, personalized news aggregator for general consumers seeking tailored local and global headlines with multi-source coverage. The app holds strong top-20 positions in the Free News category across diverse markets including Italy, Germany, India, and Japan, indicating broad international relevance.

Similar apps: Apple News, Flipboard, Feedly

Users report that the app is largely unusable due to excessive paywalls, frequent crashes, and intrusive ads that prevent reading articles. Complaints also highlight poor content filtering, with unwanted sports or biased news dominating feeds despite user settings.

Mostly negative (12% of recent reviews give 4–5 stars). People like it for few ads, and good value. The main complaints are about ads, and crashes and bugs. Recent reviews are more negative than earlier ones.

What people like

• Ads: “As far as the ads are concerned, they’re gonna be there”
• Price & subscription: “Why install news on peoples phone that wanna charge us to view it ?”

Common complaints

• Ads: “Bias, ads, and other spam”
• Crashes & bugs: “Far left ad filled crash-app”
• Price & subscription: “No option to remove pay walled source”
• Features & content: “No option to remove pay walled source”

Google News is a free, personalized news aggregator for general consumers seeking tailored local and global headlines with multi-source coverage. The app holds strong top-20 positions in the Free News category across diverse markets including Italy, Germany, India, and Japan, indicating broad international relevance.

Similar apps: Apple News, Flipboard, Feedly

Users report that the app is largely unusable due to excessive paywalls, frequent crashes, and intrusive ads that prevent reading articles. Complaints also highlight poor content filtering, with unwanted sports or biased news dominating feeds despite user settings.

Mostly negative (12% of recent reviews give 4–5 stars). People like it for few ads, and good value. The main complaints are about ads, and crashes and bugs. Recent reviews are more negative than earlier ones.

What people like

• Ads: “As far as the ads are concerned, they’re gonna be there”
• Price & subscription: “Why install news on peoples phone that wanna charge us to view it ?”

Common complaints

• Ads: “Bias, ads, and other spam”
• Crashes & bugs: “Far left ad filled crash-app”
• Price & subscription: “No option to remove pay walled source”
• Features & content: “No option to remove pay walled source”

A free, personalized news aggregator by Google LLC that curates local and global headlines for general consumers seeking tailored information. The app maintains strong visibility in the News & Magazines category across diverse markets including Russia, Vietnam, Taiwan, Thailand, and several Middle Eastern and Latin American countries.

Similar apps: Apple News, Flipboard, Feedly

Users appreciate the app's clean interface and audio features but are increasingly frustrated by intrusive ads, paywalls, and broken content filtering. Recent updates have caused significant performance issues like scrolling lag, while older complaints about stale news and inability to block sources persist.

Mixed but leaning positive (64% of recent reviews give 4–5 stars). People like it for its features and content, and being easy to use. The main complaints are about ads, and missing features or content.

What people like

• Features & content: “please add an option to hide stories that are locked behind paywalls”
• Ease of use: “concise, focused, easy to use”
• Useful: “helpful to see recent happenings globally”
• Price & subscription: “Google doesn't pay anyone to rate or review content on Play, and we expect reviewers to be honest and unbiased”

Common complaints

• Ads: “half of the news are just ads 🤢”
• Features & content: “Sponsored content is poorly marked”
• Price & subscription: “Stop shoving ads and subscription required articles into my face”
• Crashes & bugs: “every page comes up an error”