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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.

4 of 21 comments (clear)

  1. 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: 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.

  2. 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;