Google launches Play Newsstand in Indonesia, tailors content to local market

Today, Google Play unveiled a banner ad on the Play Store announcing its Newsstand now includes Indonesian content. Google has had a hand in the news aggregating game for quite a while now, making improvements with each iteration. In America it started with the simple news and weather app, then moved on to develop Google Currents, which was then replaced with Google Play Newsstand, an app that allows users to subscribe to both free and paid news sources and magazines, in a similar fashion to Apple’s Newsstand.

Lately, Google has been aggressively pushing its Newsstand into new markets. It recently launched in India and some European countries, including Spain and the Netherlands. It has now made its way to Indonesia as well, with a catalog of local sources that range from news outlets like Merdeka and Koran Tempo to lifestyle magazines like Cosmopolitan Indonesia. The entire catalog can be found here.

See: 8 digital book apps and platforms in Indonesia

However, Google is entering a market with stiff competition from already established apps, most notably Kurio, which recently received funding from CyberAgent Ventures, and BaBe, which has almost one million downloads on the Play Store and SCOOP Newsstand.

What sets Google Play Newsstand apart is that it allows users to choose the news sources that they want and customize their categories based on their preferences. It also gives recommendations to the readers, but those are placed at the bottom, putting emphasis on the content they want first and foremost.

The app is availabe on the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store.