More than three years after introducing Google News, Google announced Monday it has taken the site out of beta. The news site has grown to 22 regional editions in 10 languages and has new features, including recommendations and a Most Popular section.

We’ve certainly gotten a lot of feedback from both readers and editors. For example, readers told us they loved the news clusters but they didn’t want press releases on the home page (although they are still useful to have in the search results). A major area we wanted to address was personalization. We offered email alerts, as well as the ability for users to create a personalized page, but many users don’t have the time to specify exactly what they want. So today we’re adding a way to automatically recommend stories for users with Personalized Search.

Here’s how it works: You can sign up for Personalized Search to view and manage your history of news searches and the articles you’ve read. When you’re signed in to your Google Account, you’ll receive recommended news stories based on the previous stories you’ve read. These recommendations will be highlighted just below the top news stories on the page, in a clearly marked section. You can also get a full page of recommended stories by clicking on the section. All of this is done automatically using algorithms. For example, we might recommend news stories to you that many other users have read, especially when you and they have read similar stories in the past. We’ve also added a section to show you the most popular stories in the Google News edition you are viewing (e.g., U.S.). Now you can see the top stories being published by editors across the web, as well as other stories popular with readers, plus topics that you track or are interested in — all on one page.

Psst: ~ Google recently updated its Google Earth , added extensive 6-inch imagery for many parts of the U.K. added two more zoom levels in Google Local’s Satellite mode! Now for many areas around the world you can see a lot more detail than you could before.