Another Google news product is ditched
Jinfo Blog

By Penny Crossland

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It was only two years ago that LiveWire reported on Google’s attempts at appeasing newspaper publishers who were getting increasingly worried about online news aggregators and their provision of free links to articles. In September 2009, Google launched Fast Flip – reported by LiveWire here – and offered users a more visual way to view news on the web. Developers at Google Labs believed the service would get users to click through to articles and make money for their publishers. At the time, Fast Flip was well-received with major publishers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post signing up to the service.

Now, with the winding down of Google Labs, announced in July this year, Fast Flip, which was part of Google News is to be ditched, along with many other Google products. Another Google News product, and one of my favourites, News Timeline was scrapped in August. This feature organised news on a graphical timeline and was useful for those monitoring mentions of stories or brands in the press. Silobreaker, by the way, does something similar, for those readers who are interested in monitoring news trends.

Other Google products in the “news stable”, which have so far survived the season’s culling, are First Click, Living Stories and One Pass, the latter only being launched earlier this year. However, the Google News archive is not being updated, and it seems that news content and presentation is no longer a priority to Google management.

All efforts are, of course, being directed towards the big battle with Facebook. Google’s launch of its social networking site Google+ in June was widely reported and well-received by those testing the service. For us information professionals however, the demise of the various news features is a shame. Also, while many criticised Google for its dominance in search, Google Labs did endear it to its users and provided a link to its quirky, experimental roots. Now, as Softpedia points out, Google is very much in danger of becoming the boring, big corporation its founders always feared it would.

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