Senior Vice-President and Chief Legal Counsel David Drummond traveled to India and gave a
speech as part of a debate titled "What do we do about Google?" He prefaced his remarks by imploring the assembled newspaper publishers, "don't shoot, I come in peace." The Internet, with or without Google, offers newspapers new challenges. "If Google didn’t exist, would the industry be any better off than it is today?," he asked, before pausing "Don’t answer that just yet!" In a related effort to reach out to the news industry, our CEO Eric Schmidt published an
op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.
BEYOND THE PALE?
ReplyDeleteWAN indeed. The newspaper industry trade association is in need of a change of name. Hopefully not WAR, as in the World Association of Reactionaries. It is really not about paper anymore. It's breaking news that matters. And breaking the old mold of how to deliver them. Although, let's face it, it was always about getting target groups together for advertisers. Now there is the option of advertisers targeting individuals, since delivering customised news is a function of relevant content TIMES optimised delivery. The attractive content still has to come from somewhere, from journalists, commentators, opinion leaders - just as before. Don't let's forget that. The traditional mass media have been in the mass mediation and amalgamation business. Now they need to get to grips with the internet, which is in the individualisation business.
The two media worlds need a mediator. A Makepeace. Now there's a lateral thought... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Makepeace_Thackeray
Rupert Murdoch has said, it is complacency caused by past monopolies, not technology, that has been the real threat to the news industry.
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