New destination for newspaper, magazine and online content on Google Play
Google has today taken the wraps off Google Play Newsstand, its new app for consuming newspaper and magazine content on mobile devices. Newsstand combines Play Magazines and Google Currents, and is available as an update to the former on the Play Store from today.
For the first time users can subscribe to newspapers as well as magazines, with launch titles including The New York Times, The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and Huffington Post. These join the range of magazines already available through the old Google Play Magazines app, as well as web-based content you may have subscribed to through Google Currents. The main “Read Now” section incorporates all this content into a scrolling card-based view, and you can view and manage individual subscriptions from the “My News” and “My Magazines” areas. It’s also possible to save individual articles of interest and pin them to the “Bookmarks” section for quick access later on. And naturally, these are synchronized across all your devices.
So Newsstand is supposed to be your one-stop shop for written content on the web, whereas things were split between Currents and Play Magazines before. And the addition of leading newspapers to the mix is an important step for Google, to be sure.
Google says Play Newsstand will be available on devices in the U.S., Canada, UK and Australia as an update from Play Magazines in the next few days. Other countries can download it directly from Google Play. Check past the break for more screenshots and Google’s introductory video.
