Could Google's new Fast Flip content service be the savior of the publishing industry?

That might be a stretch. But Fast Flip, which lets readers browse through articles from popular newspapers and magazines by flipping through pages, seems like a more symbiotic relationship between the print and electronic publishing worlds than other online news aggregation sites -- including Google's own news site -- have been until now.

Google is even sharing ad revenue with three dozen publishers whose articles are included on Fast Flip.

Launched Monday, Fast Flip is an experimental service that Google said makes it easier for readers to scan through pages of articles to find stories they are interested in. Unlike Google News, which provides links to stories posted on a huge range of content producers' Web sites, Fast Flip offers up pages that are formatted more like pages in a magazine. Users can click to read the entire story or continue to "flip" sequentially through the pages to find other articles of interest.

The articles are organized in a number of ways, with the top tier offering "recent," "most read" and "headlines," for example. A second tier is organized by topic, so clicking on "music" offers up a line of current articles from the likes of Billboard and Spin, while clicking on "space" pulls up articles from BusinessWeek, The Washington Post and Smithsonian.com. A third tier offers a lineup of articles from specific publications and Web sites ranging from Slate to Newsweek and Foreign Policy, allowing viewers the ability to flip through a magazine the way they would a printed copy.

"The publishing industry faces many challenges today, and there is no magic bullet," wrote Krishna Bharat, a Google distinguished researcher, in a blog posting Monday. "However, we believe that encouraging readers to read more news is a necessary part of the solution. We think Fast Flip could be one way to help."

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