Google is holding out a helping hand to the embattled newspaper industry with a new way of browsing newspapers and magazines online.
Eric Schmidt, chief executive, has criticised the formats of online editions of newspapers as slow and “pretty unpleasant to read.”
Google unveiled “Fast Flip” at the TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco on Monday as a possible solution.
A product of Google Labs, Fast Flip makes reading the news online feel the same as flicking through a magazine. The effect is rather like clicking through a PDF document image of an online site.
Google says it has partnered with three dozen top publishers, including the New York Times, Washington Post, the Atlantic, Fast Company and Newsweek. It will share revenues from contextual ads with them.
“It tests our theory that being able to read articles faster means people will read more of them, driving more ad revenue to publishers,” said Krishna Bharat, Google News researcher, in a blog note.
There is no magic bullet for the publishing industry, he said, but “we think Fast Flip could be one way to help, and we’re looking to find other ways to help as well in the near future”.
There is also a mobile version of Fast Flip with tactile page flipping, designed for Android handsets and the iPhone.
Google says Fast Flip will aggregate and personalise news searches as well, taking cues from selections made to show more content from sources, topics and journalists that the user seems to like.
Publishers may be wary of Fast Flip, given it reduces the need for readers to click on links and go to their own advertising-supported sites. They have already given a cool reception this month to an offer by Google to manage micropayments, subscriptions and syndication.
Search is definitely getting easier on the eye. Microsoft announced a visual search feature for Bing at the TechCrunch50 conference earlier in the day, while Jim Lanzone, former chief executive of the Ask.com search engine, unveiled Clicker.com, designed to provide easier access to television shows available on the internet.
