

"Google Devalues Everything It Touches" - Wall Street Journal Chief - carlosrr
http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2009/02/google_devalues.php

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gamble
I'm not sure I buy the claim that American papers are simply behind the curve
on the Internet. The NYT has run a great site for years, yet they're still on
the brink of bankruptcy. The problem seems to be more fundamental. Even with
the large audience major newspaper sites draw, advertising revenue or
subscriptions just don't pull in enough money to replace the old combination
of geographic monopoly and classified ads.

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Retric
Problem #1, they did not port classified adds to the internet.

Problem #2, it's a free website that requires registration to view add
supported content without providing a reason to register.

Problem #3, high cost of content. It might not cost much to show a page but
creating it costs more than user or software generated sites.

Solution: Either drop the registration or add some social aspect that uses the
registration. If someone stumbles on a NYT article from Google and needs to
register to view other pages there is a problem.

PS: Advertising is the only form of micro payments of the web deal with it or
develop something new.

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timr
The registration is almost certainly there to improve their ad targeting and
CPM rates. If they removed it, it would probably hurt the bottom line.

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russell
Explicit is better, but you can tell a lot about someone by tracking their
page views and click throughs. I remember seeing an article/presentation, "How
to tell I'm a girl", but I cant find the reference. Some of it is pretty
simple. If they are reading the sports page, they might be interested in
sports. There is a bit of a problem with single computer households, but not
huge.

The main thing is get engagement first; ask for the registration later.

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raganwald
_"Google Devalues Everything It Touches"_

Joel Spolsky described it thus: _Smart companies try to commoditize their
products' complements._

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html>

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aristus
Commodifies, not devalues. Devaluing something makes it less useful for the
person buying it eg Mexico devaluing the peso. Commodifying makes it cheaper
to produce by making distribution and/or manufacture more efficient, eg Tata
figuring out how to make a car for one lahk.

The real danger is that Google is becoming the sole market maker for
advertising, which means they can extract almost all value from the
transactions.

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pg
This is like someone in 1780 arguing that industrialization devalues
everything it touches. Yes, some senses. But the world is net better off. And
more important, there is no going back.

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dkarl
People will pay. They care about hassle more than money. I absolutely detest
the process of creating an account at a site to see content, and I use
bugmenot all the time for free sites. However, I pay a decent chunk of change
for a subscription to ft.com. When I find content I like, I _want_ to
subsidize the creation of more by the same creator. Micropayments and
subscription models are the way of the future. Newspaper sites should support
both models and let readers use either.

