Is Google a Media Company?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/11/technology/11google.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

by makimaki • 18 years ago

12 16 18 years ago

nytimes.com

jaydub• 18 years ago

...or maybe Knol is just another Google Base?

kennyroo2• 18 years ago

I think that Base, while interesting, was a harder product to understand (much less use) for average users.

antidaily• 18 years ago

No, still an advertising company.

stcredzero• 18 years ago

How is search not 'media?' Haven't media companies traditionally made their income from advertising?

azharcs• 18 years ago

When smart people said in the past, Google will be Microsoft of the future, nobody believed it. I am sure, still not many will believe it. But it is a truth, which we can't deny in the future.

rokhayakebe• 18 years ago

I am not sure what the deal with Knol is but its pages ranks high very quick. In one or two years some people will earn will live off their income from Knol articles they wrote NOW and maintained well.

litewulf2• 18 years ago

I'm pretty sure Google ISN'T boosting knol, because a search for knol yields... Wikipedia!

jotto• 18 years ago

knol.google.com is the 1st result

wikipedia is the 2nd

kennyroo2• 18 years ago

Google's take rate on advertising is much higher on their own web pages, so it makes sense that they'd like to move the ratio toward Google-owned pages.

YouTube videos seem to pop up a lot on the first page of search results despite the near absence of content that might normally drive that kind of performance. Also, YouTube links often show up in the middle of the first page, which smells algorithmic. Perhaps the same kind of thing is happening with Knol entries?

So... questions for HC:

1) How much of the first page of search results can Google 'take' before people notice? (There's a reason they called it Knol instead of something like Googlepedia.)

2) If users notice, will they care as long as they find the info they're looking for?

bilbo0s• 18 years ago

I think you hit the nail on the head with number 2. Users are creatures of habit, and that goes doubly for Google users. Add to that the fact that for the average Google user, URLs are for geeks, and we can see where it may be very difficult to get people to realize that the knol pages are Google controlled content. Even more difficult to get them to care. They got their information. Case closed as far as they are concerned. On to the next Google controlled page to get the next piece of information they need.

gamble• 18 years ago

It's hard to believe that Knol has already become so popular that it would rank on the first page of generic searches like 'buttermilk pancakes' if Google wasn't giving them a bump.

DarkShikari• 18 years ago

No, Google is an information aggregation company.

I'm spending the summer in a town I don't know much about, and today, I wanted a sandwich, and my refrigerator was empty. So I went to Google Maps, and typed in "Intersection of $street1 and $street2, $town, $state to sandwiches". Yes, "to sandwiches." And it gave me a list of sandwich shops ordered by distance from my apartment. I clicked on one, saw the map directions, and went for a walk to grab myself a Subway.

Think about this for a second--the vast number of different levels of data aggregation, along with language parsing and tagging, necessary for such a seamless system to exist--yet it becomes incredibly useful in practice. And with useful services, especially useful services that allow people to search for commercial products--be it a sandwich or a computer--comes advertising money.

But the reason they can be an advertising company is because of their information aggregation. The ads are just a way to make money off of their core idea.

jfarmer• 18 years ago

Google's mission: To organize the world's information, so as to better sell ads on top of it.

babul• 18 years ago

When you start producing media content, you become a media company regardless of what you call yourself.

With search and advertising, Google was and still is a services business. With the ventures in other areas, they are often entering the markets as media producers in competition with those they used to serve.

The reason for branding these ventures in different names is not to confuse consumers and markets in general (so when you ask a random person "what does Google do?", they can reply "search ...oh, and adwords.").

In due time, the ones that become successful will be affiliated with the parent company (Google) anyway.

pongle• 18 years ago

I assumed that Knol rated highly because they have access to some good SEOs. Who better than Google to optimise your site for a search engine crawler?

In terms of Google being a media company, of course they are: advertising == media. Whether they are a content business is another question. I suspect they are, but they leverage a huge amount of user generated content (i.e. the web) instead of creating the content themselves.

Is Google a Media Company?

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