It's not even less density of information. It's less information period.

The previous design showed headlines and the first sentence or two of each article's lede. The current design just shows the headline. That's just broken, especially in the era of deceptive headlines.

It seems like the wrong success metrics are used here if this isn't an experiment. If they used something like "more clicks on articles" this change could appear positive from their end since people now have to click the articles to actually see if they want to read it.

know an alternative news source? looking for one as a result.

Techmeme remains the best tech-focused news aggregator. Their sister sites Memeorandum (political news) and Mediagazer (media news) also deserve a spot in your bookmarks.

One of their best features, which Google has moved away from, is linking to multiple news sources for each story.

news.bing.com seems to do a better job now

If you view the new Google "News" from a desktop browser with a narrow width (well, narrow for these days--1024 pixels, so I can actually have other windows on my screen), the "content" takes up about a third of the page. The other two thirds is wasted.

Even within the "content," tremendous amounts of space is wasted, and less information is present than before.

- Everyone runs their browsers maximised don't-cha-know...

I really don't, yet I've been noticing over the past few years my browser window width has been steadily getting wider to accommodate modern website design.

I disagree, sites are becoming taller. I assume because more and more people have phone and tablets as their primary browser device.

The result could be summarised as: We made it look more (exactly) like Facebook. Which has proven to be wildly popular.

The lack of density is why I am constantly using "request desktop site" for things like Reddit, too.

Sometimes we don't need a "design" so much as a list of links.

I blame touchscreen PCs. Less dense UI is better when you need to navigate with a fat finger. As Windows becomes more focused on touch, people using it will demand that the web becomes so too.

I agree, they went too far on the whitespace / card thing. A subtle change in layout could have make the thing a little easier on the eyes while retaining enough density.

It also looks ridiculous on widescreen monitors - http://i.imgur.com/Y6n5k1u.png

Wow, just horrible...

I came up with some CSS to remove the fixed header at the top and increase the information density on the page, permanently applied using the Stylish browser add-on:

  @namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);
  @-moz-document url("https://news.google.com/news/?ned=us&hl=en") {
   div.pGxpHc { display: none;}
   div#yDmH0d c-wiz.jB7svb {margin: 0;}
  .alVsqf .ME7ew .a5SXAc .CwaK9 {font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1em;}
  .lPV2Xe {padding: 0.5em; color: #3b78e7 !important;}
  .ME7ew {padding: 0; color: #3b78e7 !important;}
  .adH5zf {font: 500 0.7em/1em Roboto,RobotoDraft,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;}
  .kWyHVd .hzdq5d {font-size: 1em; line-height: 1em; }
  .MLSuAf, .OEt0Bd {margin-top: 0;}
  .J3nBBd {font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1em; border: medium none;}
  .fkWPz {display: none; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-top: 0.5em; font-size: 0.75em; line-height: 1em; text-transform: none;}
  .cZgiac .hzdq5d, .MLSuAf .hzdq5d {font-size: 0.9em; line-height: 1em;}
  .X20oP {margin-right: 0.5em;min-width: 75px;max-width: 75px;}
  .HzT8Gd {margin: 0 0 0.3em; display: flex;}
  .PaqQNc {margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 0;}
  .JoEvud {line-height: 1em;}
  .FOvasf {display: none; color: #757575; font-size: 0.8em;}
  .C0oVfc {line-height: 1em;}
  .O0WRkf {font-size: 1em;}
  .jjs37b {display: none;}
  .iYiEmb {margin: 0 0 0.5em; padding: 0 !important;}
  }

The random class names lead me to believe that your CSS might break whenever Google News gets a new release, unfortunately.

One issue is that it looks like the density was partly adjusted in order to allow for larger images alongside the story, and then some level of cruft was added to fill the area alongside.

I'm just glad the new design works better on a touch screen. Had to massively zoom the page before to click two links individually.