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Business Insider
Tech

Google plans to remove the ‘In the news’ section from its desktop search following ‘fake news’ criticism

‘Top stories’ section similar to what is on mobile will replace the ‘In the news’ section

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Photo: Business Insider
Business Insider

Following criticism over fake news on its platform, Google plans to remove its “In the news” section from the top of desktop search results in a matter of weeks, according to a source familiar with the matter. 

It will be replaced by a carousel of “Top stories” similar to what now exists on mobile. This move had been planned for quite some time, the source said.

The removal of the word “news” will, hopefully, help draw a sharper line between Google’s human-vetted Google News product, and its main search product. 

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Earlier this week, Google faced scrutiny when one of its top results for “final election count” was fake news. The top result in Google Search’s “In the news” section was a Wordpress blog named “70 News,” which falsely claimed Trump won the popular vote by a margin of almost 700,000. He didn’t.

Here’s what it looked like:

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Many thought that Google News, the company’s news section that requires publications to be approved by a committee to get in, had been duped. But actually, it hadn’t.

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