Google Fast Flip news service launches; replicates magazine experience

Continuing their dominance of the internet, Google has released a new tool for faster news-browsing, called Fast Flip. It aims .....

Continuing their dominance of the internet, Google has released a new tool for faster news-browsing, called Fast Flip. It aims to replicate the experience of reading a magazine, with a selection of content providers including the BBC and the New York Times now offering the service.

Google claims "one problem with reading news online today is that browsing can be really slow. A media-rich page loads dozens of files and can take as much as 10 seconds to load over broadband, which can be frustrating." Hence Fast Flip, which "is a way to flip through articles really fast without unnatural delays, just as we can in print."

The GoogleLabs service, which is available to use today, has a selection of recent news stories, most viewed, recommended (which learns from your browsing habits) and headlines. You can choose whether you want to see stories on politics, sci/tech, entertainment - all the usual categories users can find in Google News. Clicking on sci/tech displays 30 recent stories, although the majority of them seem to be from US content providers.

Select a story that interests you, and a cached version of that post will enlarge for reading. Click arrows to move on to the next story, and it takes under a second to flip over. Annoyingly, hyperlinked words don't work anymore, with the story you were already reading opening up in a new tab so you can click the link from there.

Google has also released Fast Flip news for the iPhone and Android platforms.

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