Customised news from Google

Google has added a new feature to its news service that lets you customise the layout and content of the front page.

Google News, which is still in beta testing since its launch in September 2002, gathers stories from more than 4,500 news sources in English worldwide.

The new Customised News feature lets you create your own sections on the Google News front page so you could focus on, for example, news of your favourite football team.

You can also rearrange the standard sections, which include Science and Technology, World, UK, Business, Sport, Entertainment and Health categories, to rank in order of importance.

The new feature also lets you share a customised news page with others by clicking on the link at the bottom of the page - it provides a URL for that current customised page via email.

According to Google, the new tool "represents another important achievement in Google's ongoing focus to help users find and organise more of the information they want".

The search engine stated: "We're excited about the opportunity to be able to offer the customised Google News feature in 9 languages, and we're exploring opportunities to make the Google News service available in more languages and more countries."