
Is Google a Media Company?  - makimaki
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/11/technology/11google.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
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kennyroo
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?

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bilbo0s
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.

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azharcs
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.

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DarkShikari
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.

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

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babul
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.

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pongle
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.

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

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

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antidaily
No, still an advertising company.

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

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rokhayakebe
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.

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

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jotto
knol.google.com is the 1st result

wikipedia is the 2nd

~~~
litewulf
[http://www.google.com/search?aq=f&ie=UTF-8&q=knol](http://www.google.com/search?aq=f&ie=UTF-8&q=knol)

The top ad is knol.google, but wikipedia is the first result. (Unless you
count that google finance graph).

Crap Google search is so cluttered.

