Google reportedly offered $30 billion for Snapchat early in 2016. But it looks like Google may have decided to compete with Snapchat instead.
The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg are both reporting that Google is on the verge of launching a news service that echoes Snapchat Discover, by creating similar mini-magazines of slides (containing text, photos and videos) that you'd swipe away one by one on your phone.
According to both publications, it's called Stamp, where the "ST" stands for "Stories," and the "AMP" for Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages initiative, which currently produces lightweight versions of online articles to speed up load times on smartphones.
The Journal reports that Stamp stories could appear in Google Search and/or other Google products, and could be announced as soon as next week. "We don't have anything to announce at the moment but look forward to sharing more soon," a Google representative told CNET by email.
It's worth noting that Google's Assistant, formerly Google Now, has had swipeable "cards" for a number of years, though you couldn't use them to swipe through individual stories -- instead, the full story would open in your phone's web browser.