AI-powered Google News debuts in iOS App Store, replaces Google Play Newsstand

Making good on promises to deliver a revamped news consumption app for iOS, Google on Tuesday launched Google News with machine learning capabilities, smart content organization and a fresh, uncluttered design.

Announced as part of the Google I/O conference last week, Google News for iOS utilizes real-time artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to analyze and organize breaking news.

At its core, Google's new service is an attempt to curate information. Leaning on advanced AI and ML algorithms, users can pare incoming stories into easily digestible chunks Google calls newscasts. The format pulls in collections of articles, videos, images and other content about a single story from a variety of sources.

The app opens with a "For You" section that offers a brief overview of five stories picked based on past reading trends and inferred interests. Like other curation-based apps, Google News applies its synthetic smarts to learn user preferences over time. Users can tweak those guidelines by telling the app to show more or less content on a given topic.

Going deeper, Google incorporates a "Full Coverage" feature under the Headlines section that allows users to view stories from a variety of sources, including social media services, as well as timelines for long-running issues.

Finally, Newsstand provides access to media outlets that rely on subscriptions and paywall blockers. Here, users can subscribe to a publication and view its latest coverage in Google's mobile-friendly AMP standard.

The new Google News replaces the internet giant's outgoing Google Play Newsstand, which launched on iOS in 2014 as a news and magazine subscription hub.

Google News for iOS is a free 125.1 MB download from the App Store.