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Google Is Adding Snapchat-Style Stories To Mobile Search Results (qz.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the follow-the-trends dept.

Google is rolling out tappable, visual stories that incorporate text, images, and videos in the style made popular by Snapchat. "It started widely testing the multimedia format, called AMP stories, today (Feb. 13) in an effort to help publishers engage more with readers on mobile," reports Quartz. Google announced the feature in a developer blog post. From the report: Users can now find Google stories in search results -- in a box called "visual stories" -- when they search on mobile at g.co/ampstories for the names of publishers that have begun using the format, such as CNN, Conde Nast, Hearst, Mashable, Meredith, Mic, Vox Media, and the Washington Post brands. Google worked with those publishers to develop the format. Desktop users can also get a taste of stories through Google's Accelerate Mobile Pages site. When a user selects a story, like Cosmopolitan magazine's piece on apple cider vinegar, it displays in a full-screen, slideshow format, similar to those on Snapchat and Instagram.

The multimedia format is part of Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project, a competitor to Facebook's Instant Articles that helps load pages faster on mobile devices. Like AMP, the AMP story format is open-sourced, so anyone can use it. However, Google is reportedly only displaying stories from a select group of publishers, including those it partnered with on the development, on its own site at the moment. The company said it plans to bring AMP stories to more Google products in the future, and expand the ways they appear in Google search.

21 comments

  1. "open source" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wow, Google is so generous to make the spec open for driving more traffic to Google servers. Truly they are servants of all mankind!

    1. Re:"open source" by Hal_Porter · · Score: 2

      They're only doing it with their partners

      "However, Google is reportedly only displaying stories from a select group of publishers, including those it partnered with on the development, on its own site at the moment."

      Since those partners are "CNN, Conde Nast, Hearst, Mashable, Meredith, Mic, Vox Media, and the Washington Post" and it only happens if you use Google I think it's safe to say this won't affect me.

      But wasn't one of the concerns about net neutrality that companies would act as gatekeepers and privilege the content from their 'partners', who would need to pay a fee to take part?

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  2. Why not just ... by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

    ... go to those sites?

    Why do we have to be the Bubble Boy?

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  3. Stop ruining everything by lucasnate1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The internet was nice before everything became mobile. You already fucked desktop interfaces, why do you want fuck the internet too?

    --
    Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
    1. Re:Stop ruining everything by sexconker · · Score: 2

      I had the "pleasure" today of navigating a very modern, very important site for some work shit on my 1920x1080 monitor.

      The site used about 300 horizontal pixels. Maybe it was 320 exactly, but I was too disgusted to check. It was about one sixth the width of my full screen browser, and I had to spend ages scrolling vertically to get shit done.

      This shit disgusts me.

    2. Re:Stop ruining everything by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Dude, even people who should know better do this. How many times have you read a developer website (example offender: stackoverflow) with a bunch of code in some little tiny box, and no matter how far you stretch your browser out, it's just hardcoded to always be 1/6 or whatever of the screen, so in order to read the code you have to scroll back and forth a million times. Why the FUCK do people do this shit?

    3. Re:Stop ruining everything by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      My phone is 1920x1080p. I use "request desktop site," and I turn it sideways. Google should start a public awareness campaign for people to do that, and then vow to eliminate mobile web pages by Jan 1st, 2019.

      p.s. Youtube should also ban vertical video.

    4. Re:Stop ruining everything by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Phones should make it possible to always record landscape video regardless of how the user is holding it. First phone to get that will be hot, until everyone else copies it.

    5. Re:Stop ruining everything by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Before firefox purged real plugins the Web Developer add-on had a key binding to block linked style sheets, now you have to use the mouse.

  4. Stories by dohzer · · Score: 1

    Wait... are they talking about adding the specific thing that I hate about SnapChat? The ones I never watch?

    SnapChat is for messaging friends, not viewing whatever commercials SnapChat wants to show users.
    I'm not trying to kill time by clicking on SnapBait; I'm intereacting with friends.

    1. Re:Stories by sheramil · · Score: 1

      Wait... are they talking about adding the specific thing that I hate about SnapChat? The ones I never watch?

      My guess is they thought "band-wagon" after someone saw Samsung do it with their Android Gallery app, which has a stories feature. The one I disabled as soon as I discovered it.

  5. Not sure how to feel about this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I read the summary and the article, but I don't actually know what the fuck their talking about.
    I guess I'll eventually find out.

    1. Re: Not sure how to feel about this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just another bloat being forced on us like Dash on YouTube.
      All this shit does is make google stuff unusable for people on high latency connections.

  6. Oh those media sites by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    CNN, Conde Nast, Hearst, Mashable, Meredith, Mic, Vox Media, and the Washington Post

    Oh ok - good to know. Now I know what to avoid.

  7. Google strikes back against SnapMaps by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Google should try innovating some day...

  8. AMP... Another Messy Proposition? by thegreatbob · · Score: 1

    I'm still failing to see how this solves anything that couldn't be done with existing standards, e.g. multiple requests packed in a single connection via HTTP/2.0, and, well, decent website design. Trying to prop up lousy website architecture (note that this includes underlying services) seems like a bad idea to me; I'm not saying that this is the intent, but I feel like it might be relevant. Also not trying to rip on it "because Google", and I might also be a bit out of touch as a very, very low-volume mobile user; if it truly does resolve a difficult problem, I see no reason not to consider its use.

    --
    There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
    1. Re:AMP... Another Messy Proposition? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm still failing to see how this solves anything that couldn't be done with existing standards, e.g. multiple requests packed in a single connection via HTTP/2.0, and, well, decent website design.

      This is what AMP is: a guide to enforce good design in order to load faster and some annotations to mark that the page follows these guidelines. Any browser that can detect these annotations can switch into a faster rendering mode since it knows that the page doesn't use the most annoying and slow parts of HTML.

  9. Every cloud has a silver lining by sd4f · · Score: 1

    As much as I dislike google, I dislike snap as a company more, and it's clear to see that none of the companies in the top 5 like to see a new competitor tread on their turf.

    It appears to me that snap hasn't been able to really do anything to stop other companies from reverse engineering snapchat features into their own products/services. As a result, I don't think snap will be around for a really long time, unless they carve out their own place in the tech landscape and prevent the other companies from encroaching on it, just like each of the top 5 more or less have.

    Also, snap has made the app the social media for the 'cool kids' and it appears like they try to keep the app exclusive, so I don't know whether that will be enough to keep them going in the longer term.

    1. Re:Every cloud has a silver lining by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      They're transitioning into an AR company that sells "DLC" and/or "IAP" type stuff to users, rather than spamming everyone to death with ads and tracking the living shit out of them. Seems like it could win in the long run. Hell of a lot better than creepy ass Facebook and Google.