• Los Angeles Times, Tuesday, September 15, 2009 2:38 PM

Google is attempting to further streamline online news consumption with Fast Flip -- an "experimental" news hub that lets readers flip through screen shots of Web pages from various publishers like a physical magazine. But, despite the search giant placing ads around the articles and sharing revenue with publishers, the question remains: How with the service affect an already flailing news business.

Google News developer Krishna Bharat says the service at least "tests" his theory "that being able to read articles faster means people will read more of them, driving more ad revenue to publishers."

Regarding the display ad to the right of each page, TheStreet.com calls it "perhaps the best showcase yet of Google's newly integrated DoubleClick ad service."

"On first glance, it looks best suited for mobile viewing," says Econsultancy blog, adding: "Trouble is, the snapshot approach is not so intuitive on a big screen ... So far, it's hard to read text and headlines are given short shrift."

Quite dismissive of the whole effort, The Times' Bits blog writes: "Of course, no one in the news industry believes that Fast Flip, even if it is successful, will do much to solve newspapers' main problem: plunging advertising revenues."

Similarly, The Los Angeles Times portrays the move as largely defensive: "It's also a way for Google to answer the slings and arrows thrown by its critics, including Wall Street Journal Editor Robert Thomson, who called the search company and other news aggregators such as Yahoo 'parasites or tech tapeworms in the intestines of the Internet.'"

Tough crowd. A slightly more open-minded David Carr reasons on The Times' Media Decoder blog: "Perhaps it's time to start taking Google executives at their word when they say they have an economic and civic interest in seeing that newsgathering, regardless of how it is displayed, continues to flourish ... We have no idea what the revenue split on Fast Flip entails, and there is still no telling whether it will result in a meaningful revenue stream for publishers, but it kicks the can down the road in a very practical direction."

Read the whole story at Los Angeles Times »