Google Inc., the world’s largest search engine provider, on Monday launched an “experimental” news-reading hub called Fast Flip, which allows online users to browse news and feature stories from dozens of sources like newspapers and magazines.
It will be recalled that Google earned the ire of several publishers after it has posted news articles in its web search engine results. But this, the Internet giant is making bold attempts to reconcile with the news industry by sharing the advertising revenues with the publishers.
Fast Flip will be featured specifically in Google News where online readers will be treated with fast reading experience, much like they do in an actual magazine.
The new program will address the persistent problem of slow and long loading period in the website, which often results to major complaints from users.
“People will actually read more news articles in the Internet if only we can provide an online experience like the actual scanning of physical newspapers or magazines. And Fast Flip did just that,” a researcher at Google said.
The officials, citing results of studies, said that browsing news in the World Wide Web is really much slower than people used to do in print.
But he said that Fast Flip’s capabilities would allow people to look faster into news articles as well as advertisements.
“Faster readership means more advertisements. And that is just how publishers want to see the online news reading experience,” he added.
The news-reading service includes publications such as The New York Times, BBC News, The Atlantic, The Washiongton Post, Esquire, and Good Housekeeping.
Also included were various online publications like Slate and TechCrunch.
However, publishers, especially in the newspaper business, remained cautious of the new Google news-reading service, saying that they are just trying the “experimental” stage.
They also said that there’s no single solution for the newspaper industry over the dropping advertising revenues.
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