Google Fast Flip was an online

news aggregator In computing, a news aggregator, also termed a feed aggregator, feed reader, news reader, RSS reader or simply an aggregator, is client software or a web application that aggregates syndicated web content such as online newspapers, blogs, ...

from

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

Inc. that mimicked the experience of flicking through a newspaper or magazine, allowing

visual search Visual search is a type of perceptual task requiring attention that typically involves an active scan of the visual environment for a particular object or feature (the target) among other objects or features (the distractors). Visual search can ...

of stories in manner similar to

microfiche Microforms are scaled-down reproductions of documents, typically either films or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or of the original document size. F ...

. It was launched in beta by

Google Labs Google Labs was an incubator created by Google to test and publicly demonstrate new projects. It was online from early 2002 to mid-2011. Google described Google Labs as "a playground where our more adventurous users can play around with prototyp ...

at the TechCrunch 50 conference in September 2009. The site presented images of stories from Google's news partners, which could be clicked on to navigate to the story on the news provider's own website. Stories could be scrolled between using the mouse or cursor keys. The presentation of stories used a similar algorithm to Google News, but stories could be ordered by publication as well as by subject. Krishna Bharat of Google News has said that "Fast Flip is mostly for longer shelf-life content, the kind of content you want to recommend to other people." Fast Flip was created after

Larry Page Lawrence Edward Page (born March 26, 1973) is an American business magnate, computer scientist and internet entrepreneur. He is best known for co-founding Google with Sergey Brin. Page was the chief executive officer of Google from 1997 unti ...

"asked why the web was not more like a magazine, allowing users to flip from screen to screen seamlessly." Fast Flip was available as well on iPhone and Android

mobile device A mobile device (or handheld computer) is a computer small enough to hold and operate in the hand. Mobile devices typically have a flat LCD or OLED screen, a touchscreen interface, and digital or physical buttons. They may also have a physica ...

s. Users of Fast Flip were able to follow friends and topics, find new content, and to create their own customized magazines around their searches. At launch, there were 39 mainly US-based news partners. Google said that it would share the majority of revenue from contextual adverts with its news partners. Fast Flip was praised for allowing visual, fast and

serendipitous Serendipity is an unplanned fortunate discovery. Serendipity is a common occurrence throughout the history of product invention and scientific discovery. Etymology The first noted use of "serendipity" was by Horace Walpole on 28 January 1754. ...

browsing of news stories, but it has been criticized as being a novelty, anachronistic, as it emulates print media, limits navigation and presents few news sources, and as being more focused on the needs of publishers than of readers. Its visual search has been compared to the beta visual search of

Microsoft Bing Microsoft Bing (commonly known as Bing) is a web search engine owned and operated by Microsoft. The service has its origins in Microsoft's previous search engines: MSN Search, Windows Live Search and later Live Search. Bing provides a variety ...

and to ''

The Onion ''The Onion'' is an American digital media company and newspaper organization that publishes satire, satirical articles on international, national, and local news. The company is based in Chicago but originated as a weekly print publication on ...

s microfiche iPhone app. Fast Flip has also been cited as a demonstration of Google's power in the news marketplace; by setting up another news interface that uses publishers' content without returning much value. In September 2011, Google announced it would discontinue a number of its products, including Google Fast Flip.

References

{{Google Inc. American news websites Android (operating system) software Fast Flip Fast Flip Internet properties disestablished in 2011 Internet properties established in 2009 News aggregators

See also

References