Rumored Google ‘Flipper’ Launches as ‘Fast Flip’

The name “Fast Flip” comes from the idea that with this visual look, you can easily flip through the news. If you find an article you like that looks interesting, you click through to read it, if not, just flip left or right to go to another. And it is fast. Really fast.

If you do like an article, there is a “like” button, similar to that functionality on FriendFeed and Facebook (the smiley face is built into the logo). You can also easily email any article to a friend. Obviously, as this is Google, there is also search functionality built into Fast Flip… Also, the more you use Google Fast Flip, the smarter it will get to things you like.

In the video above the TechCrunchers ask Google’s Marissa Mayer and her product manager about the name change (Flipper was the codename), Google’s ongoing innovation with news online, and whether any big players did not want Google using their content with this new product. More from the Google blog:

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. What we need instead is a way to flip through articles really fast without unnatural delays, just as we can in print. [...]

To build Google Fast Flip, we partnered with three dozen top publishers, including the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Salon, Fast Company, ProPublica and Newsweek. These partners will share the revenue earned from contextually relevant ads. 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.

The publishing industry faces many challenges today, and there is no magic bullet. However, we believe that encouraging readers to read more news is a necessary part of the solution. We think Fast Flip could be one way to help, and we’re looking to find other ways to help as well in the near future.

Check it out. Then let them know what you think about it.

Via SearchEngineLand, “If it’s a hit, this probably becomes the successor to Google News. And it may be the testing ground for the potential “micropayments platform” that Google is developing for content publishers — it’s all coming together now. I’m only partly kidding with that remark.”