Google has set an ambitious goal of encouraging more people to read online news -- and provide more advertising revenue to publishers -- with the introduction of Google Fast Flip.
Google Monday posted a blog introducing a beta version of Google Fast Flip in which Krishna Bharat, researcher for Google News, wrote that using today's browsers to access the news can be very slow, taking as much as 10 seconds to load a media-rich page with dozens of files, even over broadband.
Fast Flip is touted as a way to bring part of the print experience to online news by bundling recent news, headlines and topics, as well as feeds from individual publishers, and making it easy to flip through contents until the reader finds something of interest.
Fast Flip is able to tailor the content according to the user's past selections of news sources, topics and journalists.
It also provides the ability to share content with and receive recommendations from other users or members of a community, Bharat wrote.
For publishers, Google Fast Flip is providing the ability to share in revenue earned from contextually relevant advertisements. Bharat wrote that by making it easier for readers to find and read news of interest to them, they will actually read more news, thus providing an increased revenue stream for publishers.
Google's current Fast Flip partners include The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly,The Washington Post, Salon, Fast Company,< ProPublica and Newsweek.
A mobile version for Android-powered devices and the Apple iPhone is also available.
