Ok I just had a look.
It doesn't solve the problem.

The problem in my opinion is that it's 4 columns wide.
They need to eliminate the right column & incorporate it with the far left column or the other way around.

Give us two columns of news like before but with more real estate.

Fire the designer!

Greasemonkey script/Chrome extension that fixes most problems:
[userscripts.org...]

Now, if I could just get Google to stop forcing a geolocation on me, I might have a happier day. And, pigs will fly, too. :)

Engine:

I'm in South America however I get the US page.
Or are you talking about regional geotargeting.

@ TI
Regional geotargeting on google news. If I choose google news global it keeps forcing me back to my local google. I can understand why it might want to do that, however, when I specifically choose global news, I continue to get redirected.

The "in response to your feedback" part starts to get tricky, though... you might say almost insidious. On their blog page they request...

Please keep letting us know [google.com] what you think...

...and the link takes you to a multiple-choice feedback survey. The entire thrust of the survey, IMO, is to push the idea of personalization. The questions all lead to the same idea... which is that a personalized layout with personalized features is what the user really wants.

Eg, you're asked to choose among...

How important are the following...
- Seeing the news you like appear automatically.
- Specifying the news that you want to see....

When you customize how Google News looks, how important are the following options?
- Choosing your preferred layout (List, Section, or Two-column view.)
- Adding or removing different features...
- Changing the order of different sections.
- Changing the default number of stories in a section....

It's a self-fulfilling survey, one that I can't believe was actually intended to collect real feedback.

Essentially, if you want something different from what's there now, personalization is the inevitable option. I'm willing to bet that this is eventually going to require reading the news logged in (something I would not be willing to do), though the layout options could perhaps be cookie-based.

There is a text feedback field as well. By the time you get to it, though, you have already painted yourself into a "logical" corner with whatever multiple choice answers you gave.

Give us two columns of news like before but with more real estate.

I just noticed today that this is now part of the news options:

"New! View as: List Sections Two column"

I clicked "Two column" and to my eyes, it is an improvement.

................

The two columns is an improvement over what they had but the two columns are still too narrow.

They could easily combine the small left column with the wide 4th column & open up the 2 column width.

It still annoys me every time I open it.

The two columns are an improvement... but with the limitations that Tropical Island pointed out.

And, most important for me, the sections are not clearly distinguished from each other. Not enough contrast, white space, borders, section headings, or whatever combination of layout devices they used before.

What the old layout did that the new layout doesn't is that, with not much scrolling, it allowed you fairly easily to take in the whole page at a glance and spot the stories you wanted to explore further.

In this sense, the main news page of the old news layout pretty much functioned like the front page of a printed-on-paper newspaper... hard to do on a computer screen. Maybe they're now designing for much larger monitors/browser windows than what most of us are using, though you'd think that if anyone had good user-stat information, it would be Google. Maybe Google's new generation of designers is so unfamiliar with paper newspapers that they've forgotten how printed newspapers used to work.

I'm running a 1280x1020 monitor... but with my browser window running smaller than my full desktop... and with toolbars, browser bars, and tabs taking up a bunch of real estate at the top... my viewing window right now, eg, is roughly 1170x700. It worked with the old layout just fine. I have no sense of orientation now, even with the new two column layout, and especially not until I've scrolled down off the top section to the column split.

...pretty much functioned like the front page of a printed-on-paper newspaper

This.

I'm running 1024 x 768 on a 21" lcd & it's just not comfortable. Way too much scrolling.

On my laptop it's a joke.

maybe this "feedback" that they were listening too wasn't the readers, but the writers. when rupert murdoch was railing against google news for nicking all his journo's hard work, google argued that they gave them lots of free traffic in return.

the problem was, that argument only really worked for those papers that got a big link under the headlines. it didnt work so good for the 2000 others that were hidden behind the little "more>>" link. because they got no traffic at all.

this redesign addresses that a little bit, because now more papers get a link on the front page. maybe three or four times as many.

The two columns is an improvement over what they had but the two columns are still too narrow.

They could easily combine the small left column with the wide 4th column & open up the 2 column width.

Just opened Google News and it's now 3 columns across.

Maybe they do listen to criticism.

Thanks Google. Much nicer to read now.