Fast Flip: Google Solves Consumers' Rather than Publishers' Problems

Google (GOOG) knows a lot about the future of news — more than many publishers. It’s evident in Google’s new product, Fast Flip, which allows news consumers to “flip” through news stories. What’s striking about Fast Flip is that Google is innovating precisely where publishers used to lead innovation.

Fast Flip is a new package for news.

The publishing business has always been about packaging content. Newspapers. Magazines. Newsletters

In digital media, on the web, the news package is now a function of software — which is why Google is innovating precisely where publishers are not.

Fast Flip is, more accurately, an attempt to create a new UI for news — a better way to consume publishers’ content than publishers provide on their own sites.

Most publishers are focused on how to charge for news. But there’s very little talk about how to innovate the packaging of news, much less a new UI for news. There’s very little talk about how people consume news on the web, about the value of aggregating articles from multiple sources, about solving consumers’ problems rather than publishers’ problems.

That’s why Google is taking the lead on figuring out how to create the new news package, and why they will continue to control the lucrative front end of distribution, while publishers are left with far less profitable back end of content creation.

Google is sharing revenue with publishers because Fast Flip goes way beyond linking to actually partially reproducing entire web pages. And publishers will have to be content with the revenue that Google shares.

Unless they finally decide to compete on the real playing field that will determine the future of news and publishing.

Comments

[Joe Duggins:]

Several investors have gone to Google looking for Google commodities thinking they would invest in this innovative company. However, once at the site there were several articles found about Google commodities which had nothing to do with investing in them. So what is all the confusion about? It appears that a few commentators in speaking about Google and what they perceive is a loss of the search engine's creative edge, mention Google commodities by which they mean the products and services provided by the massive search engine.

This is most unfortunate language given the confusion it has created and the fact that people continue to search for information on these commodities which do not exist. More importantly, there seems to be no concrete plans for Google to start a commodities index, although there have been questions raised as to whether or not Google could use its platform to start offering commodities for trade at its site. But that talk is by others and not Google executives, at least so far as this author could discern.

Commodities are unprocessed raw goods such as agricultural products (i.e. wheat, corn, soybeans), energy (i.e. oil, natural gas), precious metals (i.e. gold, silver) and several other categories of goods which are bought and sold through futures contracts over commodities exchanges. There are 10 such exchanges in the USA and Google is not one of them.
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Sep 15 05:06 PM