Google is officially adding Web Stories to Discover in an attempt to make the familiar full-screen, tappable story format available to a wider web audience. The discover feed, available in the Google app on Android and iOS, attracts about 800 million users each month. Until now, it had been populated by relevant news stories and articles, but the Mountain View firm is now adding a "Stories" carousel.
Browsing Stories is straightforward, as it requires users to tap to move forward to the next page, and if they want to check a different Story in the carousel, they need to swipe. Google notes that the experience is "full-screen and immersive." In addition to rolling out the feature on Google Discover, the firm will work to make Stories surface more regularly across Google Search results on mobile.
The carousel, situated at the top of Discover, is presently available in the U.S., Brazil, and India. Google notes in the blog post that it intends to expand the feature to more countries and products. The firm said it "worked with a diverse group of publishes and creation tools" in the three countries to jumpstart the ecosystem, and resultantly, more than 2,000 sites have already published Web Stories on Google.
