5 ms·

Google: The World's Frenemy

23 points by nreece 17y ago

alexandros 17y ago
"Is it a friend to the fourth estate, on which democracy depends, or an enemy?" Just.. wow. Suddenly changing the business landscape for an industry(hastening the change, really) becomes a political issue?
- spot 17y ago
  Sadly, it is typical of journalists to see themselves in this way, and to see anything that threatens the system that gives them so much love in a negative light. Ironically, after how they covered the Iraq war, it seems it it is the fourth estate that has sold their soul.
  - anamax 17y ago
    > Ironically, after how they covered the Iraq war, it seems it it is the fourth estate that has sold their soul. You seem to think that coverage of the Iraq war was special/different. How cute. Journalism and journalists haven't changed recently. Your awareness of them has. (I like to say that there was a change in the mid 70s, but that's probably my awareness changing.)
    - spot 17y ago
      > How cute. would you say that to my face?
      - anamax 17y ago
        > would you say that to my face? Why not? Are you a thug?
        spot 17y ago
        because it's quite rude to be so condescending. journalism has changed in the past 30 to 40 years with the rise of the 24/7 news cycle and consolidation of TV news organizations under corporate control.
        anamax 17y ago
        > because it's quite rude to be so condescending. So? I'm occasionally rude. The changes in journalism are distribution and a perception of who is pulling the strings. However, strings were always being pulled. And, the perception of who is pulling the strings hasn't actually changed. Folks have been complaining about big biz, "outside agents", etc for as long as news has existed. They wouldn't have called it "big rail", but ....
- ovi256 17y ago
  Everything is a political issue. Dividing limited economic resources is done according to political power.
robryan 17y ago
Wonder if there is much in this book different to The Google Story, sounds like another rehash of the same story.
greyman 17y ago
I see Google as a biggest disruptor nowadays. Since they have two huge cash cows (Adsense+Adwords), they can basically offer any software service (Gmail, Office, Photo storage, Maps, GPS, webhosting, etc. etc...) for free or very cheap, since their advertising clients can pay for that. More specialized services often cannot compete, since they don't have such ads money. And this I see is a potential danger, that Google will totally crush a lot of competition in several IT-related industries, and what's more, collect a lot of personal data of all their users in the process. Microsoft was often criticized for their monopolistic behavior, and rightfully so, but it is nothing comparing to what Google does (or plan to do). Just to clarify: I don't want to bash Google, I am also their user and their products are usually good, but what I want to say is just the strategy they choose is very disruptive.
- socratees 17y ago
  I'm not defending Google or something. But still, isn't Apple disruptive? And most start-ups are disruptive too. And Ads are the proper revenue model for Google, For apple, selling hardware is its revenue model. For, Microsoft selling software & related services is the revenue model. I don't see Google's behavior as monopolistic. Also, monopolistic behavior by itself is not bad, but it becomes bad when combined with unfair trade practices. Finally, these kind of articles show up everyday. It's just the "News".
- pavs 17y ago
  There is a very obvious solution to that problem. Don't use Google services. I have seen that people who usually criticize Google the most (not saying there is anything wrong with criticizing) are also one of their bigest users. There are a lot of reasons to not like MSFT's monopolistic business, they pulled (and still does) all types of dirty tricks, including buying out government official in third world countries so that they can sell MSFT's powered notebooks to children and one up "One laptop per child project". That's probably one of the least evil thing they did. If you can provide just one example of Google doing anything remotely sinister like that I would love to listen to it.* Google, in most cases, provides the best possible service with the best possible price (often free). Some of these services in all likelihood probably is not even profitable by any margin anytime soon - or if at all, ever. This causes companies that do provide similar services at a cost to improve what they do; otherwise they would do nothing and stay content with the way things are. Google drives innovations to their competition. IE9 and its improvements would not happen if there was no Chrome. Firefox would not rethink its approach (their next release concept looks almost like chrome) and improve in performance at the pace they are now. MSFT would not aggressively improve their OS performance with windows 7 to be functional on a netbook. (Some of us knew about Google OS way before it was officially announced, in all likelihood MSFT did too). Bing would not exist. While there are real concerns about privacy, in the days of online applications and services, privacy never existed in first place, regardless whose service you are using. I think Google contribution far outweighs its negative points. However I can understand why some HN crowd can feel threatened by them. ------------------------------------------------- * There was one incident in China I can remember.
gvb 17y ago
My theory of newspapers (and magazines, but focusing on newspapers). Lets back up a century or three. Many years ago newspapers sold news, printed on paper (see Benjamin Franklin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin). They charged a lot of customers a small amount each for that news, and made a business out of aggregating lots of pennies. They also could sell advertisements and notices because they were a conduit to a relatively wide audience. Google http://images.google.com/images?q=benjamin+franklin+newspaper http://images.google.com/images?q=benjamin+franklin+newspape... Front page: http://www.ndsu.nodak.edu/instruct/rcollins/436history/pictures/franklin.jpg http://www.ndsu.nodak.edu/instruct/rcollins/436history/pictu... Example advertisements: http://mitchellarchives.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/1748-franklin-ship-ad-and-pay-up.jpg http://mitchellarchives.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/1748-... and http://www.earlyamerica.com/image/earlyamerica/past/past.jpg http://www.earlyamerica.com/image/earlyamerica/past/past.jpg Over time, newspapers and magazines reduced their reliance on aggregating lots of "pennies" subscribers paid and increased their reliance on advertisements. From a business point of view, this made lots of sense because aggregating pennies is much more difficult that getting large chunks of money from advertisers... and they could. What newspapers ended up doing was outsourcing the bulk of their news gathering to news aggregation companies like the Associated Press (AP). The up-side was it was cheaper to buy news from AP than create it independently. It was also much more efficient, obviously, since only one source could feed many, many papers. The down-side was that the papers became dependent on the outsourced news feeds and advertisement money. The dark side is that we can have hundreds of papers all feeding the same news source - it looks like there is independence in the news reporting, but it is a mirage. The result is that newspapers became more and more an intermediary broker ("middleman") and generated less and less actual content. They brokered their local eyeballs to advertisers and outsourced the creation of the product the eyeballs were looking for (news) to aggregation companies. This made/makes newspapers very vulnerable to disruption by Google, Craigslist, and bloggers/tweeters because they (Google et. al.) are able to use the internet to bypass the local newspapers, to cut out the middleman: the newspapers no longer control access to (local) eyeballs. As a result, they lost their ability to broker eyeballs (acquired by outsourced news stories) for advertisements. Just to aggrevate the problem for newspapers, the internet is a MUCH more efficient path to eyeballs. The cost of the medium is small compared to physical products (well, internet access is pretty expensive, but it is already purchased by the eyeballs so the incremental cost to layer news on top of the internet is nearly zero). Couple that with the internet-based advertisement to be able to target specific classes of eyeballs, and you have a compelling case for lots of advertisement dollars to switch from printed medium to internet medium. News aggregation companies are also suffering as a "knock-on" effect. The internet cut deeply into the primary funding source of newspapers - advertisers. As a side effect, this "cuts off the oxygen supply" to news aggregation companies. Moral of the story? You can make a lot more money as a middleman than as a company that produces a product, but it also makes you very vulnerable to disruption by companies that are more efficient (or more hungry) brokers.
mattmaroon 17y ago
""The evidence was now visible that Google was attracting more internet advertising than anyone else, and these dollars were being siphoned from traditional media," we read." That's just not true. Much of Google's ads come from sources that simply would not have advertised in traditional media, at least not in the same way. Performance marketing, which isn't really possible in a magazine, is a humongous share of their revenue. I know of people who make a load of money selling things like obscure electronics or truck parts through Google. They pay dearly for those ads, and were never going to be placing them in the New York Times.

23 points by nreece 17y ago

"Is it a friend to the fourth estate, on which democracy depends, or an enemy?" Just.. wow. Suddenly changing the business landscape for an industry(hastening the change, really) becomes a political issue?

spot 17y ago
Sadly, it is typical of journalists to see themselves in this way, and to see anything that threatens the system that gives them so much love in a negative light. Ironically, after how they covered the Iraq war, it seems it it is the fourth estate that has sold their soul.
- anamax 17y ago
  > Ironically, after how they covered the Iraq war, it seems it it is the fourth estate that has sold their soul. You seem to think that coverage of the Iraq war was special/different. How cute. Journalism and journalists haven't changed recently. Your awareness of them has. (I like to say that there was a change in the mid 70s, but that's probably my awareness changing.)
  - spot 17y ago
    > How cute. would you say that to my face?
    - anamax 17y ago
      > would you say that to my face? Why not? Are you a thug?
      - spot 17y ago
        because it's quite rude to be so condescending. journalism has changed in the past 30 to 40 years with the rise of the 24/7 news cycle and consolidation of TV news organizations under corporate control.
        anamax 17y ago
        > because it's quite rude to be so condescending. So? I'm occasionally rude. The changes in journalism are distribution and a perception of who is pulling the strings. However, strings were always being pulled. And, the perception of who is pulling the strings hasn't actually changed. Folks have been complaining about big biz, "outside agents", etc for as long as news has existed. They wouldn't have called it "big rail", but ....
ovi256 17y ago
Everything is a political issue. Dividing limited economic resources is done according to political power.

robryan 17y ago

Wonder if there is much in this book different to The Google Story, sounds like another rehash of the same story.

greyman 17y ago

I see Google as a biggest disruptor nowadays. Since they have two huge cash cows (Adsense+Adwords), they can basically offer any software service (Gmail, Office, Photo storage, Maps, GPS, webhosting, etc. etc...) for free or very cheap, since their advertising clients can pay for that. More specialized services often cannot compete, since they don't have such ads money. And this I see is a potential danger, that Google will totally crush a lot of competition in several IT-related industries, and what's more, collect a lot of personal data of all their users in the process. Microsoft was often criticized for their monopolistic behavior, and rightfully so, but it is nothing comparing to what Google does (or plan to do). Just to clarify: I don't want to bash Google, I am also their user and their products are usually good, but what I want to say is just the strategy they choose is very disruptive.

socratees 17y ago
I'm not defending Google or something. But still, isn't Apple disruptive? And most start-ups are disruptive too. And Ads are the proper revenue model for Google, For apple, selling hardware is its revenue model. For, Microsoft selling software & related services is the revenue model. I don't see Google's behavior as monopolistic. Also, monopolistic behavior by itself is not bad, but it becomes bad when combined with unfair trade practices. Finally, these kind of articles show up everyday. It's just the "News".
pavs 17y ago
There is a very obvious solution to that problem. Don't use Google services. I have seen that people who usually criticize Google the most (not saying there is anything wrong with criticizing) are also one of their bigest users. There are a lot of reasons to not like MSFT's monopolistic business, they pulled (and still does) all types of dirty tricks, including buying out government official in third world countries so that they can sell MSFT's powered notebooks to children and one up "One laptop per child project". That's probably one of the least evil thing they did. If you can provide just one example of Google doing anything remotely sinister like that I would love to listen to it.* Google, in most cases, provides the best possible service with the best possible price (often free). Some of these services in all likelihood probably is not even profitable by any margin anytime soon - or if at all, ever. This causes companies that do provide similar services at a cost to improve what they do; otherwise they would do nothing and stay content with the way things are. Google drives innovations to their competition. IE9 and its improvements would not happen if there was no Chrome. Firefox would not rethink its approach (their next release concept looks almost like chrome) and improve in performance at the pace they are now. MSFT would not aggressively improve their OS performance with windows 7 to be functional on a netbook. (Some of us knew about Google OS way before it was officially announced, in all likelihood MSFT did too). Bing would not exist. While there are real concerns about privacy, in the days of online applications and services, privacy never existed in first place, regardless whose service you are using. I think Google contribution far outweighs its negative points. However I can understand why some HN crowd can feel threatened by them. ------------------------------------------------- * There was one incident in China I can remember.

gvb 17y ago

My theory of newspapers (and magazines, but focusing on newspapers). Lets back up a century or three. Many years ago newspapers sold news, printed on paper (see Benjamin Franklin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin). They charged a lot of customers a small amount each for that news, and made a business out of aggregating lots of pennies. They also could sell advertisements and notices because they were a conduit to a relatively wide audience. Google http://images.google.com/images?q=benjamin+franklin+newspaper http://images.google.com/images?q=benjamin+franklin+newspape... Front page: http://www.ndsu.nodak.edu/instruct/rcollins/436history/pictures/franklin.jpg http://www.ndsu.nodak.edu/instruct/rcollins/436history/pictu... Example advertisements: http://mitchellarchives.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/1748-franklin-ship-ad-and-pay-up.jpg http://mitchellarchives.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/1748-... and http://www.earlyamerica.com/image/earlyamerica/past/past.jpg http://www.earlyamerica.com/image/earlyamerica/past/past.jpg Over time, newspapers and magazines reduced their reliance on aggregating lots of "pennies" subscribers paid and increased their reliance on advertisements. From a business point of view, this made lots of sense because aggregating pennies is much more difficult that getting large chunks of money from advertisers... and they could. What newspapers ended up doing was outsourcing the bulk of their news gathering to news aggregation companies like the Associated Press (AP). The up-side was it was cheaper to buy news from AP than create it independently. It was also much more efficient, obviously, since only one source could feed many, many papers. The down-side was that the papers became dependent on the outsourced news feeds and advertisement money. The dark side is that we can have hundreds of papers all feeding the same news source - it looks like there is independence in the news reporting, but it is a mirage. The result is that newspapers became more and more an intermediary broker ("middleman") and generated less and less actual content. They brokered their local eyeballs to advertisers and outsourced the creation of the product the eyeballs were looking for (news) to aggregation companies. This made/makes newspapers very vulnerable to disruption by Google, Craigslist, and bloggers/tweeters because they (Google et. al.) are able to use the internet to bypass the local newspapers, to cut out the middleman: the newspapers no longer control access to (local) eyeballs. As a result, they lost their ability to broker eyeballs (acquired by outsourced news stories) for advertisements. Just to aggrevate the problem for newspapers, the internet is a MUCH more efficient path to eyeballs. The cost of the medium is small compared to physical products (well, internet access is pretty expensive, but it is already purchased by the eyeballs so the incremental cost to layer news on top of the internet is nearly zero). Couple that with the internet-based advertisement to be able to target specific classes of eyeballs, and you have a compelling case for lots of advertisement dollars to switch from printed medium to internet medium. News aggregation companies are also suffering as a "knock-on" effect. The internet cut deeply into the primary funding source of newspapers - advertisers. As a side effect, this "cuts off the oxygen supply" to news aggregation companies. Moral of the story? You can make a lot more money as a middleman than as a company that produces a product, but it also makes you very vulnerable to disruption by companies that are more efficient (or more hungry) brokers.

mattmaroon 17y ago

""The evidence was now visible that Google was attracting more internet advertising than anyone else, and these dollars were being siphoned from traditional media," we read." That's just not true. Much of Google's ads come from sources that simply would not have advertised in traditional media, at least not in the same way. Performance marketing, which isn't really possible in a magazine, is a humongous share of their revenue. I know of people who make a load of money selling things like obscure electronics or truck parts through Google. They pay dearly for those ads, and were never going to be placing them in the New York Times.