Google partners with news publishers for new search tool

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Google has partnered with news publishers to launch a new tool for browsing online news articles and headlines. Google Fast Flip can be used in the same way as Google News to search for news items, but will return images of webpages as results for keyword, most viewed and recent news searches.

These webpage screenshots will direct the reader to the original article when clicked. A link to more Fast Flip results for that news source and any bylined writer are also included.

The experimental product will allow users to 'flip through articles really fast without unnatural delays, just as we can in print', an announcement on the Official Google Blog said .

As part of the launch, the search company has signed up publishing partners including the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Salon, Fast Company, ProPublica and Newsweek, who will take a share of the revenue generated by contextual advertising placed on the article pages.

"This gives publishers an opportunity to introduce new readers to their content. It also tests our theory that being able to read articles faster means people will read more of them, driving more ad revenue to publishers," the blog post from Krishna Bharat, Google News researcher, said.

Article web pages from the BBC, National Review Online, Elle, Business Week and the Associated Press are also featured in the Fast Flip launch.

A version of the service has also been developed for Google's Android mobile device and the iPhone.

Fast Flip is the latest in a series of launches for Google News. Earlier this month the site released Google Spotlight , a tool for highlighting investigate journalism articles on the aggregator. Last week details of a micropayment system, based on Google's Checkout product, that could be adapted for online use by newspaper publishers were announced.

The launch is the latest development in a sometimes troubled relationship between the search engine and the industry. Google has previously been criticised by news organisations for the secrecy surrounding its ranking system for news sources on Google News, as well as the company's 'scraping' of content from news websites. The UK's National Union of Journalists (NUJ) previously proposed a levy on such aggregators to help subsidise the cost of producing the content that they scrape. The search engine was also sued by Belgian newspaper industry group Copiepresse , which said Google had used its papers' content without permission.

Yet many media commentators argue that Google is a huge traffic driver to online news sites, which can then try to make money from this increased audience.

"Our guiding principle is that whatever technical standards we introduce must work for the whole web (big publishers and small), not just for one subset or field," said Josh Cohen, senior business product manager for Google, in a recent blog post .

"There's a simple reason behind this. The internet has opened up enormous possibilities for education, learning, and commerce so it’s important that search engines makes it easy for those who want to share their content to do so - while also providing robust controls for those who want to limit access."