Have you ever gotten tired of reading a number of news articles online, no matter how interesting the headlines were, just because you couldn’t wait for accounting the pages to load? As if they heard a clarion call, Google has developed a service called Fast Flip. This program, still in its experimental stages, promises to bring you an online reading experience akin to flipping the pages of a newspaper or a magazine, hence the name.
Fast Flip is touted to combine the best elements of print and web media, allowing a reader to browse through the most current news, topics or headlines in sequential order, as well as feeds from the highest ranked individual publishers. In addition to that, Fast Flip testing by Google will also provide tools for searching, aggregation and sharing of content.
In a prototype which witnessed Fast Flip vpxco testing by Google, the internet behemoth collaborated with The New York Times, Newsweek, Business Week and Washington Post, which number among an approximate 36 publishers. Google has also sweetened the deal with these publishers by sharing revenue generated from Fast Flip with them.
The project by Google Labs will see authorized screen grabs from participating publishers displayed as full-length news stories, and not snippets, on Google News. Similarly to Google News, readers can browse news in categories based on Google News’ sections, sources or in the order of which is most popular. Interestingly, the tool has been described as a modest R&D project by a senior optoki VP of digital operations at The Times. This might prove to be an understatement at a later date.
Critical sentiment has been recorded from some quarters who feel that this latest project is a mutually beneficial exercise in revenue generation rather than an altruistic pursuit to encourage more people to read. This claim appears to be true when one takes into consideration the fact that Google intends newsheater to generate revenue by selling ads displayed alongside the news stories and hopefully mend relationships with print media publishers, which have been acrimonious at best.
