Google Fast Flip verdict – good news for users, bad news for newspapers

So long Google News and thanks for all the traffic.

Google Fast Flip may still be in the labs but the search giant's latest efforts should give some in the newspaper industry nightmares.

First things first, it is a pretty nice concept, if far from new, and it offers a decent user experience (although my Media Blog colleague Jon Silk is not so easily impressed).

Search a news event - Kim Clijsters US Open win for example - and Google Fast Flip will return results in all their visual glory by rendering the look and feel of the host website.

You can browse from one page to the next by clicking backwards and forwards on the blue arrows. And if you want to visit the site in question simply click on the image.

Google is in no doubt why you'll want to use it:

In short, you get fast browsing, natural magazine-style navigation, recommendations from friends and other members of the community and a selection of content that is serendipitous and personalized.

There's also a promise of a revenue share for publishers who sign up but here's where it starts to unravel for a news industry increasingly fretful about generating revenue online.

Paul Bradshaw, writing on the Online Journalism Blog, is in no doubt that this is a bad move for publishers and the only motivation to sign up is "blind panic". He notes:

Of course, by hosting screenshots Google are eating into one of the key metrics that publishers use to sell advertising: the time a user spends on your site. And given that many readers don’t read beyond the first few pars, there’s a good chance it will eat into the numbers clicking through to the actual page at all.

The Telegraph's Shane Richmond nicely satirises the move in his Fake Eric Schmidt blog this morning. Adopting the potty-mouth of Google's (fake) CEO, he writes:

And here’s the part you ——— will love: we’ll share the revenue with you. Of course the ads will be ours, not yours. Oh, and Fast Flip shows enough of the article that readers will decide not to click through and read your pages at all. But you’ll thank us for it because we’ve saved your business model. Happy now bitches?

Related:
 - Flippin’ ‘eck: Google Fast Flip isn’t fast, doesn’t flip
 - What Would Google Do? Fail Quietly.
 - ‘I Consider Google News A Gift, Newspapers Consider It Theft.’

Jon Bernstein is a freelance writer and digital media consultant. He is the former multimedia editor for Channel 4 News, editor-in-chief of Directgov and editor-in-chief of silicon.com.

He also blogs at jonbernstein.wordpress.com

Comments

[Will Sturgeon]

I've got to be honest, I shuddered at first at the thought Google was turning newspapers into eBooks.

I remember magazines and newspapers revealing the eBook as their great white hope for the future and laughing from the ivory tower of a pureplay dot-com. So blind were they to what the web was doing they refused to see the obvious answer, instead recreating a failing format in a new fundamentally flawed one.

Change is needed, not a facelift to a present format. Furthermore, such formats only really work while the paper still exists, or the order and structure is entirely arbitrary. The newspaper industry needs an answer post-print - a real painkiller - not some complementary vitamins.

[Jon Bernstein]

Google is getting beaten up both ways - for the strategy and the execution.

And I think the former is a much more serious charge. Because - as much as publishers complain - Google News does provide a commercial opportunity whereas Google Fast Flip massively reduces that opportunity.

As for the interface and design, the news aggregator is replicating web pages (so far) and not trying to do the eMagazine thing. Given users are likely to be in browse mode, I suspect it will suit them just fine. Not so the publishers.

[twitter.com/CarterCole]

i thought fast flip didnt work well so i wrote a review http://blog.cartercole.com/2009/09/review-of-google-fast-flip-why-i-think.html