Google Releases "Fast Flip" for Speedy News Browsing

Posted 09/15/2009 at 9:30am | by Paul Lilly

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Earlier this week, Google introduced an experimental news hub it's calling Fast Flip. The aptly named service, which is based on Google News, makes it easy for readers to quickly flip through news articles from dozens of major publishers.

"Browsing news on the Web is much slower than it is in print," said Krishna Bharat, a researcher at Google who developed Google News in 2002. "When it is fast, people will look at more news and more ads, and that's something that publishers want to see."

What Google's trying to do is make reading the news a similar experience to flipping through a newspaper or magazine. So far, there are about three dozen publishers who have jumped on board, including BBC News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, and even some Web-only publications such as TechCrunch.

Of course, everything revolves around ad revenue, and so Google plans to display ads next to the stories and share the resulting revenue with publishers. What isn't known is exactly what cut publishers stand to receive.