Google News already featured some integration with Google+ in the past, but today, Google is expanding this integration by bringing “relevant Google+ posts for a new social perspective” to its news aggregation site. Starting today, Google News users will be able to see what their circles, journalists covering the story and those who are the subject of the story have to say about it. Google News will now also feature a new “realtime coverage page” for every news story that will surface these Google+ comments, as well as new articles as they become available.
In addition to these updates, the Google News design will change a bit once these features go live, as Google is also expanding the size of the images on the main page.
These updates are only coming to the U.S. edition of Google News for now. Google plans to roll these features out over the next week, so chances are you won’t see them in your account just yet.
The main feature here, though, is obviously the addition of more content from Google+ on Google News. Given the almost visceral reaction many Google users have to Google+, the company has wisely decided to allow its users to opt out of this feature. If you don’t want to see these discussion from Google+, Google says, “you can either log out of Google or turn off the display of Google+ posts via the Google News settings page.”