4 ms·

Book Review- Googled: The End of the World As We Know It

12 points by physcab 17y ago

drenei 17y ago
"Maybe in the end, even on the Internet, you get what you pay for." I'm not sure that I want to read the book, but that was an interesting review of it. The last paragraph had me thinking about 'free' in the context of music. We've had free music before - radio. It was a lot more restricted than todays 'free' music, but it was free (beyond the initial hardware purchase). Of course there was a monetization strategy (radio = ads = physical albums sales + other revenue). The solution for the problems today isn't a return to yesterday. But also, importantly, things of value yesterday aren't always going to be valuable today (and vice versa). Things change.
- Freebytes 17y ago
  Grooveshark (www.grooveshark.com) is an excellent example of a way to take something that is free and monetize it in one form or another. VIP accounts and advertising work for the site, and the record labels still can earn money from it so they might be happy. Someone always pays, though... it simply may not be the end user.
  - physcab 17y ago
    I hear they also have a great Artists product (artists.grooveshark.com) that provides real-time analytics to artists so they can tour and promote their music more efficiently :)
- cdibona 17y ago
  I have to admit, I loved the review simply for the use of the word "antegoogluvian". But, substantively, what does 'free' mean? When a reporter writes about a book he didn't write for a publisher he only works for likely in a freelance basis about a company who's existence drives traffic to and is the subject of the article, who values whom from what? I mean, the value chain (if you will) goes from Google (my employer, inclsude standard disclaimers here, as I'm just chatting) crawling the web, then showing ads next to the results that lead people to click through (organically or via the ads) to an article about a book based on a number of visits to Google. It seems to be turtles all the way down.
enomar 17y ago
For a book review, he didn't talk about the book much. Most of the article seemed like a rehash of Google's history from the author's memory.
MikeCapone 17y ago
I'm still puzzle by the argument that "Google makes money from other people's content". Don't these content producers realize that there's probably more than half their traffic coming from Google? Google helps people find their stuff. How is that bad?
- brandnewlow 17y ago
  How so? Google is making money from people's content. The people making the content might be making some money, too, but Google is making much more. The content producers are all using....Google Adsense, to try and turn Google traffic into money. And Google has relentlessly "smart-priced" its adsense payouts down into oblivion. So Google's scooping up content to power its index, sending people to these sites, where they click on ads that pay Google an advantageous share of the wealth. Sounds like they're making money off people's content.
  - alexandros 17y ago
    If they're using Adsense, it must be worth it to them. In other words, they believe they are paying a fair price for the value they extract. The ones who believe they can do better try alternative approaches, such as direct contact with advertisers, among others. So why complain? AFAICT, Google does not discriminate in favour of adsense-using websites.
    - brandnewlow 17y ago
      I'm not complaining. Just explaining how Google makes money from other people's content.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
jsz0 17y ago
"Google makes money from other people's content" Google makes money by making other people's content accessible to a wide audience in the most efficient way. In most cases you bypass search engines and go straight to the sites you're interested in because you have an expectation it's worth reading most of the front page and some of the individual stories. If a site cannot manage to capture a loyal audience they have no one to blame but themselves. When the user is seeking out new information with no preferred source of the content they goto search engines because they want the most relevant results. They're not interested in going to 20 or 30 individual sites and searching these little islands of information. The old media is still convinced they can be the gatekeepers of culture and information while Google focuses on giving people what they actually want. It's pretty obvious who's going to win here.

12 points by physcab 17y ago

"Maybe in the end, even on the Internet, you get what you pay for." I'm not sure that I want to read the book, but that was an interesting review of it. The last paragraph had me thinking about 'free' in the context of music. We've had free music before - radio. It was a lot more restricted than todays 'free' music, but it was free (beyond the initial hardware purchase). Of course there was a monetization strategy (radio = ads = physical albums sales + other revenue). The solution for the problems today isn't a return to yesterday. But also, importantly, things of value yesterday aren't always going to be valuable today (and vice versa). Things change.

Freebytes 17y ago
Grooveshark (www.grooveshark.com) is an excellent example of a way to take something that is free and monetize it in one form or another. VIP accounts and advertising work for the site, and the record labels still can earn money from it so they might be happy. Someone always pays, though... it simply may not be the end user.
- physcab 17y ago
  I hear they also have a great Artists product (artists.grooveshark.com) that provides real-time analytics to artists so they can tour and promote their music more efficiently :)
cdibona 17y ago
I have to admit, I loved the review simply for the use of the word "antegoogluvian". But, substantively, what does 'free' mean? When a reporter writes about a book he didn't write for a publisher he only works for likely in a freelance basis about a company who's existence drives traffic to and is the subject of the article, who values whom from what? I mean, the value chain (if you will) goes from Google (my employer, inclsude standard disclaimers here, as I'm just chatting) crawling the web, then showing ads next to the results that lead people to click through (organically or via the ads) to an article about a book based on a number of visits to Google. It seems to be turtles all the way down.

enomar 17y ago

For a book review, he didn't talk about the book much. Most of the article seemed like a rehash of Google's history from the author's memory.

MikeCapone 17y ago

I'm still puzzle by the argument that "Google makes money from other people's content". Don't these content producers realize that there's probably more than half their traffic coming from Google? Google helps people find their stuff. How is that bad?

brandnewlow 17y ago
How so? Google is making money from people's content. The people making the content might be making some money, too, but Google is making much more. The content producers are all using....Google Adsense, to try and turn Google traffic into money. And Google has relentlessly "smart-priced" its adsense payouts down into oblivion. So Google's scooping up content to power its index, sending people to these sites, where they click on ads that pay Google an advantageous share of the wealth. Sounds like they're making money off people's content.
- alexandros 17y ago
  If they're using Adsense, it must be worth it to them. In other words, they believe they are paying a fair price for the value they extract. The ones who believe they can do better try alternative approaches, such as direct contact with advertisers, among others. So why complain? AFAICT, Google does not discriminate in favour of adsense-using websites.
  - brandnewlow 17y ago
    I'm not complaining. Just explaining how Google makes money from other people's content.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]

jsz0 17y ago

"Google makes money from other people's content" Google makes money by making other people's content accessible to a wide audience in the most efficient way. In most cases you bypass search engines and go straight to the sites you're interested in because you have an expectation it's worth reading most of the front page and some of the individual stories. If a site cannot manage to capture a loyal audience they have no one to blame but themselves. When the user is seeking out new information with no preferred source of the content they goto search engines because they want the most relevant results. They're not interested in going to 20 or 30 individual sites and searching these little islands of information. The old media is still convinced they can be the gatekeepers of culture and information while Google focuses on giving people what they actually want. It's pretty obvious who's going to win here.