Google Play News To Rival Apple Newsstand? | TechTree.com

Google Play News To Rival Apple Newsstand?

Google Play News is expected to roll out digital magazines and newspapers.

 

A new offering from Google termed Google Play news which is expected to complement the company's huge lineup of apps, magazines, movies, music and books, seems slated to be rolled out soon. Android Police says this feature termed "Google Play News" is expected to be similar to how Google Play offers magazines. Play News is expected to roll out newspapers in the same way. The News section in Play News is expected to have a yellow colour coding.

A JavaScript file apparently obtained from the Play Store on the web, gives away hints about Google Play News being in the works. We did some checking and found there indeed is a a JavaScript file, although it looks cluttered, we found mention of the new Google feature in the file, which read as:

"To read Google Play News, you must have a supported Android phone or tablet
Please sign-in to get this News edition
please sign-in to get this magazine
Subscribing you to this magazine"

From the code, it seems that the Play News will be similar to the "Magazine" section that Google Play already has. It begs the thought of whether there will be any direct linkage between the two. Google Play News is yet to take-off real-time, and looking at Google's past history of providing "clarity" in their services, we can expect some of that in the "Play News" as well.

This feature reminds us of the Apple Newsstand service. Apple Newsstand is an inbuilt application on Apple’s iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, which enables people to download digital versions of newspapers and magazines.

Apple Newsstand screenshot
Screenshot of Apple Newsstand on an iPad (Image Credit: Wikipedia)

Since there appear to be resemblances between Google Play News and the Apple NewsStand, it's worth mentioning that Apple's offering has been a runaway hit with digital publishers; who have reported an upward spike in their respective magazine/newspaper apps.

Now, with Google having a similar feature in the works, it will be interesting to think about users reading news on their Android smartphones. But Google will have to fight it out with Apple to emerge successful in the "digital newspaper" arena.

Last week there was announcement that the hugely popular "Google Reader" RSS news feed reader would be killed, leading to an outcry across the world. That may well have been an evolutionary change towards the company adopting Google Play News, to offer "digital newspapers and magazines" to Android users.


TAGS: Google, Internet, Apple, Android

 
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