Google Makes Mags Come Alive

Newspaper and magazine publishers have long grumbled at Google’s (GOOG) habit of trolling their web sites for interesting stories, grabbing the headlines, and aggregating them at its Google News site. All that work we do, they complain, and Google just snags a piece of it and pockets revenue for ads it can put next to it? Now, Google—which has always been a little squeamish about its own practice—has introduced a feature that may be able to return some of that revenue, while duplicating the experience of pleasantly paging through a magazine.

Yesterday, Google launched Fast Flip, a Web site in which users can thumb through news stories in a format that feels like a physical magazine. At Fast Flip, users see multiple tiers of miniature magazine and newspaper pages, lined up in horizontal bands.

 The pages are just large enough for you to scan it and see if it piques your interest; clicking on each page brings it up to the screen and enables you to read it. Or you can just scroll through to the next band of pages, browsing through the news as if you were sitting at the breakfast table.

Instead of text ads, which Google uses alongside its search results, Google has placed display ads in the body of each page and has agreed to share the revenue with each news organization that produced the copy.

Google’s news partners range widely across the media universe, from Slate to the Atlantic, the New York Times, and Fast Company. If Fast Flip takes off, those long-suffering media outlets may finally see a little more ad revenue coming their way. “These partners will share the revenue earned from contextually relevant ads,” wrote Google News “distinguished researcher” Krishna Bharat in a blog post. “This gives publishers an opportunity to introduce new readers to their content. It also tests our theory that being able to read articles faster means people will read more of them, driving more ad revenue to publishers.”

But will it take off? According to PC World writer Harry McCracken, the feature still has a few bugs to work out. For example, McCracken pulled up a blog post by Atlantic writer Megan McArdle that consisted of one line and a video clip. Unfortunately, Fast Flip didn’t transfer the video, which left readers with the disconcerting experience of flipping to a page with one sentence on it and nothing else. McCracken’s verdict? “Odd and imperfect, but useful.”

Daily Tech reporter Jason Mick is similarly ambivalent. “While the service indeed allows for fast reading, it has several major annoyances,” he writes. “The first is that you have to click a link to get the full story—the Fast Flip only gives you a page-sized screenshot of the story (how about a scroll option, Google?). Second, you get less stories than Google News, both in terms of number of articles, and sources (only select partners show up). Finally, the switch lags just enough that it doesn’t really feel ‘fast’.” Mick also worries that news organizations may have given too much control over advertising to Google.

Still, with ad revenue draining away from an ailing news industry, any stab at innovation is interesting and welcome news.

[http://www.thebigmoney.com]