Googled: The End of the World As We Know It
The man is Ken Auletta (New Yorker journalist), watch him on Fora TV. His book is here
Among all the interesting things he says about Google and the Media :
He says that Google has an engineering culture and doesn’t understand publishing.
How can the people (journalists) make a living?
Google is making 2/3 of its revenues from adwords. It’s a lot of money. It is equivalent today to the revenues of the entire magazine industry worldwide. ad it’s growing.
“Multitasking” of the young generation is a matter of concern.
New York Times cannot afford a newsroom of 1200 persons anymore. Google has a selfish interest in journalism for providing search accuracy. But Google has not got answer to the newspaper advertising problem. Advertising online is providing publishers no more than 10% of the revenues it used to generates traditionnally. Because the advertising cannot pay for a ad that is not performing enough. that is where the fundamental problem is and should be solved.
Google wants to preserve good journalism for its business purpose because they need trust. Trust is their main asset.
Google now is entering the news phone business and the business model is different from the web.
Murdoch move shows that he wants Google to pay more money. But creating firewalls to contents is risky because other sources will replace the walled sources and hackers will enter the battle.
With the recession the companies realise that they need two sources of income (ad+ subscription).
Even Marc Anderseen (Ning) is almost willing to charge for his social networks.
97% of google revenues comme from ad. 3% come from a pay search for companies (more accurate search)
Anecdote: at the begining when he became CEO ERic Schmidt found a nice office occupied by an engineer . and then he shared the office with the engineer (instead of take the room for himsel). that created a strong thing inside Google.
Google has the belief that they are in a candystore and that they can buy everything.
but their virtue is that they are long term believers. they invest in unprofitable activities (labs)
danger for google : efficiency of search is not sustainable (too many indexed stuff)
Google worry about expert vertical search AND Google is scared by Facebook potential search capabilities. If you ask your friends about a search (for a cam recorder or restaurant) that is frightening for them.
so they tried to buy twitter.
In 1998 Ken visited Bill Gates. He asked what do you worry about, what is your nightmare?
He said (not Netscape, Oracle or Sun or competitor) “I worry about someone in a garage coming with some new technology that I never heard of and that is really going to bite my business.”
who was in the garage in 1998? Google.
What is different nowday that people think that nothing was most importan ever tha internet?
nothing but the speed of changeinternet takeover : 9 years
Facebook after 5 years : 300 millions people.
the world can change overnight > insecurity even at Google.
The book “innovator dilemna” shows people stick to their business
Microsft is facing this dilemna. i’ts tough. It is a nowhumble company. It hopes that Google wil make the same mistakes than them
Google creators had the clarituy to create a culture by a time everybody wanted to create portals
25 millions dollars of investment no revenues free food free massage. and it worked.
they have created a miraculous company
BUT
for Google it’s late to think about peope fears about concentration power, copyright privacy issues
as it’s late for traditionnal media to jump on the internet
As you can see the discussion is really getting hotter everyday…
About his book, Amazon says :
From Publishers Weekly
Two Googles emerge in this savvy profile of the Internet search octopus. The first is the actual company, with its mixture of business acumen and naïve idealism (Don’t Be Evil is the corporate slogan); its brilliant engineering feats and grad-students-at-play company culture; its geek founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, two billionaires who imbibe their antiestablishment rectitude straight from Burning Man; its pseudo-altruistic quest to offer all the world’s information for free while selling all the world’s advertising at a hefty profit. The second Google is a monstrous metaphor for all the creative destruction that the Internet has wrought on the crumbling titans of old media, who find themselves desperately wondering how they will make money off of news, music, video and books now that people can Google up all these things without paying a dime. The first Google makes for a standard-issue tech-industry grunge-to-riches business story, its main entertainment value being Brin’s and Page’s comical lack of social graces. But New Yorker columnist Auletta (World War 3.0: Microsoft and Its Enemies) makes the second Google a starting point for a sharp and probing analysis of the apocalyptic upheavals in the media and entertainment industries. (Nov. 3)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Product Description
A revealing, forward-looking examination of the outsize influence Google has had on the changing media Landscape.There are companies that create waves and those that ride or are drowned by them. As only he can, bestselling author Ken Auletta takes readers for a ride on the Google wave, telling the story of how it formed and crashed into traditional media businesses-from newspapers to books, to television, to movies, to telephones, to advertising, to Microsoft. With unprecedented access to Google’s founders and executives, as well as to those in media who are struggling to keep their heads above water, Auletta reveals how the industry is being disrupted and redefined.Using Google as a stand-in for the digital revolution, Auletta takes readers inside Google’s closed-door meetings and paints portraits of Google’s notoriously private founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as well as those who work with-and against-them. In his narrative, Auletta provides the fullest account ever told of Google’s rise, shares the “secret sauce” of Google’s success, and shows why the worlds of “new” and “old” media often communicate as if residents of different planets.
Google engineers start from an assumption that the old ways of doing things can be improved and made more efficient, an approach that has yielded remarkable results- Google will generate about $20 billion in advertising revenues this year, or more than the combined prime-time ad revenues of CBS, NBC, ABC, and FOX. And with its ownership of YouTube and its mobile phone and other initiatives, Google CEO Eric Schmidt tells Auletta his company is poised to become the world’s first $100 billion media company. Yet there are many obstacles that threaten Google’s future, and opposition from media companies and government regulators may be the least of these. Google faces internal threats, from its burgeoning size to losing focus to hubris. In coming years, Google’s faith in mathematical formulas and in slide rule logic will be tested, just as it has been on Wall Street.
Distilling the knowledge accrued from a career of covering the media, Auletta will offer insights into what we know, and don’t know, about what the future holds for the imperiled industry.
The Future of Magazine 