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Has Google flipped?
16-09-2009
by Ralph Averbuch
Google's experimental news service will not win friends inside the traditional media world.
There's little doubt that newspapers need a scapegoat for their initial tardiness when it came to the web and then the latter panic as they've realised that there's simply not enough revenue to go round, on or offline... especially in a recession. So it's little surprise that the print press's favourite foil is Google. The hackneyed argument goes that Google as arbiter of most web traffic is 'stealing' their business by... linking to them! We joke not. This has lead to all sorts of hare-brained ideas where Google basically gives newspapers cash. We can be confident that precedent's not about to be set anytime soon. But, given Google's less-than-ideal relationship with press barons of old, you'd think it would be keen to avoid further controversy. Apparently not! Google has just launched an experimental news service which doesn't just grab headlines and fragments of news, but actually grabs an image of the destination news page. How will this go down with news site owners? The words 'lead' and 'brick' come to mind. And just to be clear, these screen grabs are entirely readable inside Google Fast Flip, the name given to this latest web wheeze from Google Labs. The flip refers to the way you can quickly flip through a site's news pages inside this Google tool. There's absolutely no doubt that this is a great consumer and business tool, which will find favour with newsaholics everywhere. Problem is, it very clearly treads on some already sore toes in the newspaper world. Let's see how long it takes for the hacks to attack...
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