For quite some time, Google and newspaper and magazine publishers have failed to get along -- and historically for good reason. But Google doesn't actually want to fight, and its new news reading service, Fast Flip, might go some way toward salving some wounds in the publishing business.
Google's relationship with news publishers has long been contentious. Over the years as newspapers have seen their sales plummet, publishers have grown increasingly distraught over Google's decision to sell ads on Google.com and Google News alongside newspaper content. The publishers, of course, never see the profits from this.
As in any disagreement, there are two sides and according to Google, their services have helped news publishers. The leader in web search services and advertising asserts that they drive an invaluable amount of traffic to publishers because of their use of the publishers' timely content.
Google also contends that publishers have always been able to easily block them from indexing their content. The problem, however, is that it becomes a sort of Catch 22 for publishers: if they block Google, they lose much-needed traffic, but if they continue allowing Google to index their content, they never see the proceeds from the ad revenue generated by their news stories.
Google's news reading service, aptly titled Fast Flip , is being seen as a way for the company to make amends to news publishers -- and turn a profit for all involved. Released at the beginning of September, this news hub enables users to access news and magazine articles from several dozen major publishers. The theory is that users will be able to "flip" through this content as quickly as they would the pages of magazine or newspaper.
Fast Flip is loosely based on Google News, but the company believes it will help address the biggest problem faced by most major news sites: their snail pace. Internet users who access their news online must contend with the sites being incredibly slow to load, and once they've actually reached the content they want to view, they're then inundated by pop-up ads, rollover ads, etc. etc.
It is Google's belief that if reading news online was similar to the experience of scanning through a tangible newspaper or magazine, more people would read. Krishna Bharat, a distinguished Google researcher who developed Google News, agrees that browsing the news on the web is much slower than it is in print-and that's a problem. "When it is fast, people will look at more news and more ads, and that's something that publishers want to see," Bharat said.
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