Google News and Google Reader

The Google News section could be a useful starting point for many people who want information from the internet. The biggest advantage is the large scope of different types of stories avaliable. The fact that you can prioritise which sections you prefer is also useful, especially if you are intrested in very certain areas. For example, I personalized it to have Broadstairs (my home town) as one of my sections. By doing this it prevented be from having to spend hours searching the net every time I wanted to see what was happening at home whilst I was away. the other major advantage is that it lets you show all the sources of the story, which means you can easilyb see different prespectatives of the same event. In my opinion however, the biggest drawback is that their is too much news if anything. Some of the stories related to various sections aren't really newsworthy and it can be frustrating trawling through everything.
This was all the biggest problem I had with Google Reader. This was probably my fault however as I didn't specify my feeds precisely enough. An example of this is that I had a feed for all BBC football and a loit of information wasn't really useful at all- I don't particuarly want to know the Rushden and Diamond verses Torquay result. Apart from that it could be quite useful especially if you like a certain columinist as it can stop you trawling about through websites trying to find the column. However, it wasn't really that good for me because the feeds I choose I would look at anyway. BBC Sport is my homepage afterall. Prehaps if I had been more specific it may be more helpful but as it is I'd rather just search the internet.
Although both ideas have some disadvantages they could be a useful starting point for any research you want to do. I can see how Google Reader could be very useful for very specific feeds but as it was I got too much information. Thus, if I had to choose between the two I would always go for Google News.