When it was leaked last week that Google is offering up a micropayment solution for newspapers, my cynical side noted that this seemed like Google giving the newspaper industry tools to commit suicide faster.

Then, earlier this week, Google unveiled its new "Fast Flip" application, which tries to make the process of skimming news more like reading a physical paper. Sorta. Or, as many people have pointed out, it mimics the old "microfiche" machines that we old folks used to have to use to scan archived newspapers in the library. It was inconvenient and annoying then, and it doesn't seem that much better now (though, at least we don't have to deal with getting the whole negative/positive thing straight).

I almost wasn't going to say anything about it, but Jeff Sonderman points me to a post at the Online Journalism Blog that suggests (similar to my thoughts on the micropayment stuff) Google's Fast Flip is a cruel joke being played on the news industry (on purpose or not). At that link, Paul Bradshaw argues that the cruel joke is that Google would benefit more from this than any newspaper -- and that might be true, but I get the feeling this is more about false hope for newspapers.

More ...