Fears That Google Is a Media Company (Duh…)
By Anna Johnson on August 11th, 2008Google’s launch of Knol, it’s answer to Wikipedia where contributors can upload their own articles and share advertising revenue with Google, seems to have fueled fears that Google is increasingly controlling both content and access to content on the Internet.
There is little doubt that Google, as the owner of YouTube, dominates online video content; it also owns the popular blogging platform, Blogger.com. Recently it introduced its own virtual world, Lively, followed shortly thereafter by Knol.
And that’s just to name four of its content properties.
Google claims that it’s nothing more than a media conduit – where it connects people with content, rather than create or own content itself. That, in my opinion, misses the point. Whether it technically
creates the content or effectively hosts the content, Google is still either the source or arbiter of more and more content. That gives it increasingly more control over what content people consume on the Internet and, for that reason, it IS a media company.
That being so, I think it’s reasonable to ask whether Google may tend to favor its own content sites over others when it comes to ranking results in its search engine result pages (SERPs). While there is no definitive evidence of this as yet – and Google denies it will ever happen – it’s almost inevitable that Google WILL favor its own sites. That’s simply because, as its own sites gain further popularity and authority… they will will rank higher in the SERPs.
Yet, despite Google’s growing control over what we see when we search – or otherwise use the Internet – can we really complain yet? Assuming Google really isn’t “doing any evil” behind the curtains, then, while far from perfect, it’s still delivering a lot of value to Internet users. Let’s face it, who is offering a solid alternative to Google in terms of search… online video aggregation… free
world mapping… free analytics… and so on?
And while other media companies might not like seeing Google increasingly eat into their ad revenues… who is offering a real alternative in terms of giving Internet consumers what they want?
Source: Miguel Helft, “Is Google a Media Company?” New York Times, August 10, 2008
