Remember that moment in Forrest Gump when he spots Lieutenant Dan on the shore and gets so distracted that he jumps off the boat, letting it crash into the dock? That’s how Google News feels today. It’s drifting away nudged by the same distraction.

As a journalist, I’ve relied on Google News for years to catch up on topics that interest me. I usually filter by U.S. news organizations, set a date range—often the past week or past day—using the Tools menu, and specify language and location. That worked consistently.

Bit by bit, that reliability vanished. Now, most of my searches pull in Instagram or other social‑media sites instead of vetted news outlets. Many results appear in languages I can’t even recognize, and they’re published in foreign countries, not the U.S. I’ve also noticed the date filter ignoring the setting, returning stories weeks, months, or years old.

The latest failure: when I set the past‑week range, Google News disregards the setting and shows old headlines. It’s as if Google abandoned the platform and let it crash into the dock, leaving me with a broken news feed.