Google announced a wide slate of updates designed to strengthen the company’s connection to the open web, including new Search features and expanded partnerships with global news publishers.
The company said the changes aim to give users faster access to trusted information while helping websites and creators build more engaged audiences.
A key update is the global rollout of Preferred Sources, a Search feature that lets users customize their Top Stories feed to see more content from outlets they value.
Google said the tool will reach English-language users worldwide in the coming days, with support for all other languages planned for early next year. Nearly 90,000 unique sources have already been selected by users, and Google reports that people click on their preferred outlets twice as often on average.
Google is also introducing a feature that highlights links from a user’s existing news subscriptions, prioritizing stories from subscribed publications and surfacing them in a dedicated carousel. This capability will debut in the Gemini app in the coming weeks, followed by AI Overviews and AI Mode.
The company is additionally updating the way links appear across its AI products. AI Mode will show more inline links, refreshed link designs, and new contextual introductions explaining why each link may be useful.
Google’s Web Guide—an AI-assisted tool that organizes useful links into topic groups—has been made twice as fast and will now appear in more “All” tab searches for users enrolled in the experiment.
Beyond product changes, Google is launching a new commercial partnership pilot with a range of global publishers, including Der Spiegel, El País, Folha de S. Paulo, Infobae, Kompas, The Guardian, The Times of India, The Washington Examiner, and The Washington Post.
The program will test how AI features can help publishers reach more engaged audiences. Experiments include AI-powered article overviews and audio briefings within Google News, each with clear attribution and links back to publishers’ stories.
Google said it is also working with organizations such as Estadão, Antara, Yonhap, and The Associated Press to incorporate real-time information into the Gemini app.
The company framed the updates as part of its ongoing effort to evolve Search and Gemini in step with changing information-consumption habits, while maintaining collaboration with publishers, creators, and websites of all sizes.
