|
|
Fast Flip pulled by Google
2011-09-06
Net giant Google claimed Friday it's pulling the plug on its online stories reader Fast Flip and closing Aardvark, a "social search" service it acquired last year. Google asserted it is winding down Fast Flip, which was revealed in Sep 2009, and closing down Aardvark as an element of the closure told last month of its experimental test bed Google Laboratories . "With the winding down of Google Laboratories , the Google Fast Flip project also will be winding down," Google stated that a transient message on the Google Laboratories site. "We will start removing Fast Flip from Google Stories and Laboratories in the approaching days," the Mountain View, California-based company claimed. "For the previous two years, the Fast Flip experiment has fueled a novel solution to quicker, richer content display on the Internet which may live on in our other display and delivery tools," Google related. "We need to thank the handfuls of participating US publishers for their partnership with us in trailblazing stories content scanning and reading experiences for the Web and mobile devices," it revealed. Google partners on Fast Flip include The NY Times, the BBC, The Huffington Post, The L. A. Times, The Christian Science Monitor, The WSJ and other publications. Other corporations supplying content include mags eg the Atlantic, Sophisticated , Elle, Marie Claire and Preferred Engineers alongside online reports sites TechCrunch, Salon and Slate. Fast Flip permits users to flick thru stories stories from Google's media partners at a velocity noticeably quicker than the time it generally takes to load an Internet page. Aardvark co-founders Max Ventilla and Damon Horowitz related in an article titled "Goodbye Aardvark" the service will shut down at the end of Sep . Google bought Aardvark, which was set up in 2007, in Feb of last year for a purchase price put at $50 million by technology blog TechCrunch. Aardvark uses the contacts in a person's network to provide answers to questions thru the Web at Vark.com, instant messaging, e-mail or Twitter. "Aardvark commenced as a tiny experiment in a new sort of social search, and over 1 or 2 years matured into a service that made millions of connections between folk to answer each other's questions," Ventilla and Horowitz claimed. "Over this time, we learned plenty about making and maintaining internet communities, and the way to expedite sharing of data between people," they exclaimed. "We've been excited to share these lessons inside Google during the last year, particularly as a part of the effort behind Google+".
|