Google has gone ahead and released an experimental product that allows users to flip through pages of news as if they were reading a print magazine. The objective of Google Fast Flip is to enable you to quickly glance through the latest news updates. If you find the article interesting you can pause and read. Otherwise you can flip to the next page by simply clicking on the right arrow.

Fast Flip is an interesting concept. Initially google has signed up with three dozen top publishers, including the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Salon, Fast Company, ProPublica and Newsweek. Fast Flip displays partial screen grabs of each news instead of a textual excerpt. This has its own advantages and disadvantages. One one hand this allows the reader to get the gist of the story without reading the full story and may result in lost page-views for the publishers. On the other hand the visual presentation provides news publishers with more opportunities to attract readers. Google Fast Flip is also an unique opportunity for news publishers as this is the first time that Google is going to share revenues with the publishers.

As far as users are concerned, I think it has some potential. It allows you to get a glimpse of the article and gives you a better idea about its content. However, I am not entirely sold on the concept. What do you think about it? Don’t forget to tell us. And check out Telegraph’s article if you want a slightly different take on Fast Flip.