As I read on, I learned that this new hub would allow its users to read stories from dozens of major publishers and "flip through them as fast as they would the pages of a magazine." The first thing I thought after reading this was that Google is bringing laziness to an art form... but then I thought back to something I learned in my Senior year of high school. I took an AP Environmental Science class, and aside from all of the 'tree-hugging' ideals that were instilled in my brain, I remembered something that had actually shocked me. I believe it was that roughly 70 percent of landfills are filled with paper. So is Google's new service a good thing? Aside from being a major competitor to these publications, Google is taking a step into the future while 'Going Green' in a sense.
We are now in the age of Digital Communication, so if news is conveyed to the media in a faster and more efficient way, more people are bound to read it. Within the article, a researcher at Google, Krishna Bharat, commented on this idea:
"Browsing news on the Web is much slower than it is in print...When it is fast, people will look at more news and more ads, and that's something that publishers want to see."
I know that when I myself read the news paper, I don't read the whole thing and it ends up going to waste. If Fast Flip avoids the waste and brings the news to the media in a quicker way than browsing than I think that it can be a very successful program. Though it was never mentioned, I can only assume that this feature will be free, which is another plus as opposed to buying the paper everyday.
I like the innovations that Google and other online sites are coming up with because expanding our use of technology is like taking one giant leap towards the future. The closing paragraph in this article explained that Fast Flip will also soon be available on some mobile phones... and all I could do was laugh and say "well obviously." Honestly..who didn't see that coming?
Really, really interesting, Michelle. From a technological standpoint, I tend to always side with that Google's experiments. This "fast-flip" seems like a really interesting harvesting idea. Websites like Huffington Post and The Drudge Report have been harvesting news stories for YEARS. But the whole 'flip' technology does seem to make Google a bit (at most) different from sites like these.
ReplyDeleteYour environmental take is also interesting. Let's not forget that less paper would also mean less employment for all those printer techs and delivery people.