Google has announced Currents, its much-anticipated rival to the hugely popular personalised magazine application, Flipboard and it's available now for Android, iPhone and iPad.

Google Currents - currently only available in America - is a personalised news aggregator that takes dull copy from news sites and formats it into an attractive magazine-style viewer.

In a blog post the search giant said: "We've worked with more than 150 publishing partners to offer full-length articles from more than 180 editions including CNET, AllThingsD, Forbes, Saveur, PBS, Huffington Post, Fast Company and more.

"Content in optimized for smartphones and tablets, allowing you to intuitively navigate between words, pictures and video on large and small screens alike, even if you're offline."

Users can add a whole host of news sources to Google Currents, including RSS feeds, video and photo feeds, public Google+ streams and Google Reader subscriptions. There's also a 'trending tab' that helps users discover new content based on their tastes.

Currents works seamlessly with Google+ so users can share articles or videos with their social circles, and Analytics is integrated so publishers can "increase their awareness of consumers' content preferences, device use and geographic distribution."

The application has already been met with some criticism, however, with commenters on the Google blog complaining about it being exclusive to the U.S. and American tech blogger Robert Scoble said on Twitter: "Anyone who says Google Currents will beat @flipboard is clueless. I am sorry I even went there."

Google Currents is available to download in America now from the Android Market and Apple AppStore.

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