A New Visual Version of News from Google

Google is now introducing a visual version of its news. It has been named the “Flipper”. Flipper enables the users to view the images of the publications. The user can literally flip through the pages. The system seems to be similar to two others currently in use. One is the Google News Timeline. It is a better visual version than the current News. The other one is catalog search which is not functioning now. This used to show the scanned versions of retail catalogs.

Google has not yet officially commented on Flipper. The product is now in an internal beta on a password protected server. Only if you login in to your Google account you can access the product.

It is a common guess that Google developed the product in conjugation with the high rated publishers. It seems the publishers lobbied so that they get a greater visual representation of their publications in Google News. These are publishers who feel that their brands have been diluted by mingling them with the usual blogs and nameless sources in Google News. The publishers assume that if the branded pages if projected separately will be noticed better there by get better response, since the brands are more trusted by the customers.

It is possible that there will be some small charges deducted for the service. It might be some find of a subscription charge. But the assumption is that the customers will be willing to spend a bit if they can view the publication brand or news sources of their choice.

It is possible that the service when launched will stay parallel to the Google News in use currently for some quite a period of time. Google has to experiment and introduce greater changes in the news because it has not been performing up to its potential. Yahoo news is the most viewed news at present.

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