When Google sunset their RSS reader, Google Reader, many people didn’t know what to do. Luckily for me I found that Digg’s new RSS component was actually much better than Google Reader.
Shortly after the announcement that they were shutting down the Google Reader service the company acquired news reader startup Wavii for around $30 million.
Wired Magazine reported on Wednesday that Google has released a new Android app called Newsstand that appears to be the culmination of the remaining members of the Google Reader team and the Wavii technology. The app will learn what you like to read about and deliver content that it believes you want to read. As you use the app the tailored experience will improve.
At launch Google will give users access to full length content from USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times as well as magazines Variety and Wired. You’ll also be able to import your favorite magazines and newspaper subscriptions. Google expects to ramp up their content partnerships for Newsstand quickly.
Wired reports that the new app is also a mashup of Google’s two previous similar efforts, Play Magazines and Currents. But unlike Currents, Newsstand will support publisher paywalls and have a conduit for users to subscribe to the newspapers and magazines directly within the app.
Newsstand will also let users drill down on content pulling content from other Google sources like chrome and web searches.
The app is getting mixed reviews from people who’ve already downloaded it from the Google Play store. Kenneth Carlson wrote “For this they killed Google Reader? ! The first 40 stories this app tried to show me were 70% froth and 40% marketing flack. (Some were both.) Google probably knows more about what I read than my wife does. Surely they could have found something closer to my interests. A chimpanzee with a crayon and a copy of the New York Times could have done better.”
Another former Currents user Vidam Ciocazan said: “Goodbye Currents This is a welcomed update. I like the look and feel of the new interface, it looks more like a Google product and fits perfectly with the general design language of Google Apps. Intuitive, clean and automatically transfers preferences from Currents. Also it has a much lower performance hit, unlike Currents, which stutters on my device. Change is good”
There’s no word on whether or not Google will add a web based version of Newsstand or try and get it into the iOS app store. For now if you’re an Android user you can download it here.
