India seems to be focus of Google right now, especially from Android growth perspective. Just yesterday, their Android One program was launched with 3 low cost smartphones. India also may be the first country to get free offline Youtube Access. Now, yet another Google feature will be available to Indians – The Google Play Newsstand.
Now, if you are not aware what Playstand – It is an Android app offered by by Google that features news and content offered by hundreds of online websites and magazines from across the world. The content is free as well as paid and users can subscribe to magazines and other premium publishers through the app.
Google basically has merged their popular Google Currents app and subscription based Google Play magazines under one roof called Google Play Newstand. While this was available in India earlier, users could only subscribe to free content. However, going forward they can subscribe to premium magazines as well.
Play Newsstand has also partnered with over 30 Indian publications [via Medianama] as per the announcement made at the Android one launch event. The partner publications include Indiatimes, Zigwheels, NDTV movies, NDTV Gadgets, ABP News, LiveMint, HT, ESPN Cricinfo and many others. Apart from it popular magazines like India Today, Vogue India, GQ India, Cosmopolitan will also be available.
Indian users can not only subscribe to Indian magazines, but also purchase subscriptions to hundreds of popular global magazines and newspapers. Some of them include Vogue, GQ, TechLife, Cosmopolitan etc. Google claims that it has over 1900 free and paid full length publications on Newsstand currently.
We tried making purchase of certain international magazines and the process went smoothly. Infact, many of the international magazines also offer free 30 day trial subscription, so you can even try before you subscribe. Subscriptions are available on monthly as well as yearly basis.
Google Newsstand has number of nifty features that many users will find appealing. They can bookmark a article, which can be later consumed even when the user is offline. Apart from it features like users can also share the articles on their social timelines or choose to see the article on the web. The layout of app is simple and intuitive. Users can choose content from only some specific news sources and magazines .
Overall, we found Play Newsstand to be a great source to consume online news and magazine content. Give it a try and let us know what you feel.
You can download Play Newsstand App from here.
[…] has now enabled Paid content subscription for Indians on their Newsstand app. Indians can now read free and well as paid new and magazine content from over 1900 publications […]