Goolge, News Innovator?

Google may hold the future of news in its hands and has what many publishers wished that had thought of first. Google's newest product, Fast Flip may be the latest tool that will be an asset to news today.

The Fast Flip allows news consumer to flip through news stories. What's interesting about the Fast Flip is that Google is now taking the lead where publishers used to be on top.

Publishing has always been about packaging content such as newspapers, magazines and newsletters.

With a new era of digital media, on the web, the news package is now a function of software which is why Google is the leader and the publishers are not.

Fast Flip is an attempt to recreate a better UI for news. This will be a better way to consume publishers' content than publishers provide on their own site.

In publishing most are focused on how to charge for news but hardly any conversation on how to innovate the packaging of news, much less a new UI for news. Also there is little discussion on how people consume news on the web, about the value of aggregating articles from multiple sources about solving consumers' problems rather than publishers' problems.

This is why Google is taking the lead on figuring out how to create new news package and why they will continue to control the lucrative front end of distribution.

Google is sharing revenue with publishers because Fast Flip goes way beyond linking to actually partially reproducing entire web pages. 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.