Google orginally launched Your News Update back in 2019 as a way to bring users convenient little clips of audio news, rather than having them sit through entire podcasts. Now, two years down the line, the company has rather quietly removed the service and gone back to offering only its standard news briefing.
While active, Your News Update offered a mix of short news stories from different sources based on your interests, history, location, and preferences, in addition to trending topics picked up by Google. If you kept listening, the Assistant would then transition from these brief audio clips to longer-form local, national, and international content (not exceeding 10 minutes each). To help make the curated news pieces specific and relevant to the user, Google relied on its vast personal data stores. We tested the feature when it launched, and we got about 15 topics spanning approximately one hour. Most of the content came from recent stories on sites we selected and a few others from non-selected sources.
Apart from Assistant, Your News Update is also no longer available in the Google Podcasts Explore tab, to which it was added in September of last year. If you used the the service before, you’ll now see the following message:
Your News Update is no longer available, but you can still get the latest news from your favorite shows by adding them here.
A Google spokesperson confirmed the removal of the feature to 9to5Google, calling it “streamlining.”
We’re streamlining our audio news products to improve users’ experience. People will still be able to get audio briefings through News Briefings on Google Assistant.
Despite the introduction of Your News Update, Google’s original News Briefing service (which comprises audio digests from sources you manually choose re-order), remains available in Assistant News settings. Even though Google's scrapped the former, News Briefing is still fully functional (as the only news option), so you won't be left stranded.