Google Revamps Its Currents Mobile Newsreader App To Make It Smarter And More Scannable
Google just launched an update to Google Currents, the company's Flipboard competitor, that makes it easier to scan through categories and editions from Google publisher partners like The Guardian and Forbes in the app.
Context & Ripple Effects
A year after Google launched Currents in December 2011 as its answer to Flipboard, the product is getting its first major usability pass: the update centers on scanning through categories and editions from publisher partners like The Guardian and Forbes. The breadth of pickup — the Official Android Blog, VentureBeat, ZDNet, Mashable and others all carried the story on the day — suggests Google is treating the reader as a strategic surface, not an experiment.
The timing matters: the revamp lands the same week Google released Maps for iPhone, part of a broader push onto Apple's home turf. A polished, free, cross-platform reader is Google's bid to own the moment mobile users spend reading, rather than just searching.
First-order effects
- Publisher partners such as The Guardian and Forbes get their editions surfaced more prominently and scannably inside Currents, improving discovery of their content within Google's app.
- iOS and Android readers get faster navigation between categories and editions, narrowing the usability gap that has separated Currents from Flipboard since launch.
Second-order effects
- Flipboard now competes against a free reader backed by Google's distribution and iteration cadence, putting pressure on it to keep differentiating on curation and design rather than raw features.
- Publishers gain a credible second major mobile reader to court, letting them play Google and Flipboard off each other for placement and partnership terms.
Third-order effects
- If platform owners keep shipping polished free readers, mobile news distribution consolidates around access layers controlled by Google and Apple — publishers trade reach for dependence on platform-controlled curation.
- Google's willingness to keep investing in a standalone reader signals that curated feeds are becoming core mobile real estate for the company, not side projects.
The trend: Mobile newsreading is consolidating around platform-owned access layers, with Google iterating free cross-platform readers to control how publishers reach smartphone users.