The man behind Google News is in the news
again. Krishna Bharat’s latest creation is Google Fast Flip, which
delivers some print-like features in the online world.
A Distinguished Researcher at Google, Inc., Bharat has come a long
way since his days at St. Joseph’s Boys’ High School in Bangalore.
Armed with a bachelor’s from IIT, Madras, and a doctorate from Georgia
Tech, Bharat headed to Silicon Valley in the late ‘90s. At Google,
where he heads a research team, Bharat’s interests include user
interface and web information retrieval. It’s not a surprise that his
PhD thesis was on Human Computer Interaction. In the wake of 9/11,
Bharat developed Google News, which aggregates over 25,000 news
websites in 24 languages—including Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam and Telugu.
Google Fast Flip provides online access to a number of periodicals,
whose pages can be turned sequentially to find, read, print and share
articles. “In short, you get fast browsing, natural magazine-style
navigation, recommendations from friends and other members of the
community and a selection of content that is serendipitous and
personalized,” writes Bharat on his blog. Will Google Fast Flip become
as successful as Google News?
Google’s media partners are cautiously optimistic, largely because
they get to share the advertising revenue. The New York Times,
Newsweek, The Atlantic and SPIN are just a few of the print
participants. Online publications like Salon, The Christian Science
Monitor, Slate and The Huffington Post have also been included on
Google Fast Flip.