Sample image of Currents Producer. Courtesy Google Mobile blog

Thursday, Google finally launched its long-rumored magazine-style publishing platform for tablets and smartphones. It’s called Currents, and it’s available now in the U.S. for both Android and iOS.

In development, it was code-named Propeller. It’s been percolating for most of 2011. Rumors placed it anywhere from a brand-new tablet-first UI for Google Reader to a Flipboard-style social news filtering and recommendation service.

It turns out that while Currents contains pieces of all of those, it’s probably thought best primarily as a ...