Skip to main content

Google to Launch Its Version of Facebook Instant Articles Next Week: Report by Qutobuzzy-Qneg

Following Facebook's lead, Google is said to launch its own version of Facebook's Instant Articles next week.
Re/code reports that Google has started sending media invites for an event on Wednesday in New York. The invite reportedly reads, "A new open source initiative for the mobile Web," tipping towards the launch of a new feature altogether.
(Also see: How Google and Facebook Are Creating an Internet of Walled Gardens)
The first details about any such feature being developed by Google surfaced earlier this month. It was reported by NYT that Google was working with Twitter and news publishers like The Guardian and New York Times for the new 'Instant Articles' feature.
It was reported to look like Facebook's Instant Articles; though Google's version was said to create a Web link alongside an article storage system. The feature was reported to present online news articles and digital magazines in a few milliseconds to users, instead of the 5 to 10 seconds it would normally take. The most notable highlight of any such feature was to "develop a universal standard for publishers", according to NYT.
Danny Sullivan, founding editor of Search Engine Land, had commented on Google's upcoming product, "Google and Twitter are rightly fearful that publishers are going to start doing something specifically for Facebook and they will become an afterthought."
Re/code adds that Google's version of Instant Articles differs from Facebook in one very crucial aspect - Google will not host the content. Instead, it would present articles pulled from cached versions from search. The technology would be released as an open source tool to other platforms, with Twitter just the first major partner involved. Publishers interested would have to slightly modify their Web code to make it easily accessible for caching. NYT had reported Google's cached instant articles would seem like their non-cached counterparts, replete with banner ads, photos, and links to other stories.
In contrast, Facebook's Instant Articles involves hosting the content itself - so that it loads instantly. Facebook achieves faster loading by pre-loading articles as users scroll News Feed. Because the article has already been loaded in the background, pictures pop up instantly when tapped the link, and embedded videos start playing the moment scrolled down to them.
Lately, not only Google and Facebook have been trying hands on providing access to articles to users, but Samsung and Apple have also tried hands.
Recently, a news aggregator platform was launched by Samsung months after Apple announced News, an improved app replacing Apple Newsstand for users to keep up with news and articles.

Published by: Qutobuzzy-Qneg
              October3 2015

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Virtual reality set to transform filmmaking

Chris Milk stepped onto a TED Conference stage and took the audience on an awe-inducing trip into the future of movies. While much of the early attention on virtual reality has focused on use of the immersive technology in video games, Milk and his US startup Vrse are using it to transform storytelling and filmgoing. "We have just started to scratch the surface of the true power of virtual reality," Milk said. "It's not a video game peripheral. It connects humans to other humans in a profound way... I think virtual reality has the potential to actually change the world." He had everyone in the Vancouver audience at TED , which ended Friday, hold Google Cardboard viewers to their eyes for what was billed as the world's collective virtual reality experience. Google Cardboard gear is literally that -- cardboard
Continue reading »

Explained: Camera Improvements in the New HTC 10

With the HTC 10, the Taiwanese company is promising to undo the past wrongs in the cameras of its previous flagship phones. The camera has long a weak point in HTC devices. At first, HTC sacrificed image resolution in the M8 and made the size of individual pixels larger to capture more light (what HTC called Ultrapixel). But the resulting 4 megapixel images were often fuzzy, especially when cropped or enlarged. To fix the issue, in its next flagship - the M9 - HTC went with smaller individual pixels in a 20-megapixel camera last year, but it still underperformed in extreme situations, such as indoors and close-ups. In the HTC 10, the company attempts to strike a balance with larger individual pixels (1.55µm), but not as large as before and a 12 megapixel sensor in its camera coupled with a ƒ/1.8 lens. HTC accepts that in the imaging performance in the M9 was not up to the kind of spec of what they really like to see in a flagship. HTC is giving a slight boost to the selfi...
Continue reading »

Freedom 251: 30,000 Units Sold, Components for Up to 2.5 Million Will Be Imported

Ringing Bells, the makers of the Rs. 251 smartphone - the Freedom 251 - confirmed to Gadgets 360 on Tuesday that it has still only accepted payments for 30,000 units of the phone. It also added that the components for these phones will be imported, and only assembled in India, not made here. Ringing Bells stopped accepting orders on February 19, and claims to have received over 70 million registrations. The company President and Director both repeatedly stated that the price of the phone would be made possible through economies of scale, and making the phone in India to cut out import costs. Economies of scale? However, in a discussion with Gadgets 360 the company revealed that it had only sold 30,000 units of the phone on day one. The company has now confirmed that it has not sent out the payment emails to anyone else who registered - "we were working out details of cash on delivery, which we are announcing now, so we will be sending emails to the first 2.5...
Continue reading »