Tag: Google Play Newsstand

An interesting rumor has surfaced just days before Google I/O 2018 about the future of Google News and Play Newsstand.  In a post on AdAge, It is reported that News will become the flagship news service for the Mountain View company, integrating video elements and digital magazines into a single app.  It will mean that Play Newsstand, where digital magazines are currently kept in the Google ecosystem, will be deprecated at some point.

The news is interesting as it reflects a broader effort by Google to streamline their app portfolio to be less congested and confusing for consumers.  Taking this news in balance along with the expected revamp of Google Play Music and YouTube, Google is moving more to the “Google” brand and away from the “Play” brand.  This has already happened with the company moving away from “Android” branding products too.

The Google Play Newsstand, Google’s news curation and information app, has an update rolling out in the Play Store.  The update, version 4.5 for those keeping score at home, improves browsing within the app and also improves the handling of photos with improved zooming in on photos.  If you have the app installed, you can expect the OTA update to the new version over the course of the next few days.

While the Newsstand app relies heavily on AMP pages, there are still plenty of sites that it leverages that don’t use or fully use it.  That can make browsing slower which is something Google addressed in this build.  Browsing of these non-AMP sources is much faster within the app now with far less loading time.  I tested this on both LTE and Wi-Fi connections and in both cases, they content loaded noticeably quicker.