Entrepreneur Watch

"Preditors": The decline of journalism in a Twitter world

One of my wife's cousins, Mort Rosenblum, was a long-time AP reporter, coving wars, disasters and political news around the world. A few years ago he took a buyout from a declining AP.

At this point, he's given up on trying to be a journalist any more. Except for my friends at the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, almost every journalist either of us knows has done the same.

Personally, I'm trying to get back into full-time journalism.

Mort just sent me a rant that illustrates the trend of journalism in a Twitter world. Online recruiters for the Tribune Company are creating a new TV morning news show. Is the organization looking for seasoned reporters?

As the kid sarcastically replied to the journalism professor who insisted, 'In English, two negatives make a positive, but two positives never make a negative' : 

"Yeah, right."

Here's what the Tribune thinks of reporters for its "morning news/Infotainment" site:

"Don't sell us on your solid newsroom experience. We don't care. Or your exclusive, breaking news coverage. We'll pass. Or your excellence at writing readable copy for plastic anchorpeople. Not interested." 

What DOES the Tribune want? They want you, if...

"You're an earbud wearing, app downloading, rss reading, podcast playing, text messaging, flip-flop wearing professional . . . with a real-world education" and "'You 'Get It'." (Punctuation as written.) 

Oh, and: "Your greatest communication tool is a keyboard, your writing is 'bleeding edge', and you realize that when it comes to the written word, less is more."

I always though less was less.

Mort finished his note with a quote from his forthcoming book about journalism and the ways to gain a better understanding of the world, "Little Bunch of Madmen":

"In 2010, Peter Tague tried an experiment with his Georgetown law students. He told them Chief Justice John Roberts was about to resign, but he would not reveal his source. And he asked them to keep the news confidential. By the time he explained he was messing with them to make a point, half an hour later, the story was everywhere.

"Radar Online, a gossip site, picked up a student's Twitter alert and reported an "exclusive." It gave no reason but speculated on Roberts' health. Later, instead of retracting the report, it said Roberts had changed his mind. Meantime, Fox News and other major outlets had broadcast the story."  

All I can say is, "Yeah, right."

Journalism's Near-Death Experience. Can Google help?

Journalism isn't dead, but it's about as robust as an octogenarian with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

People like to place blame on their favorite scapegoat: Google News stealing their stories, Craigslist stealing their classified ads, bloggers stealing their audience.

I don't buy it. The real culprit is unstoppable. It's the Internet itself, Stupid! News and a lot of feature stories are going online, and from there, they're shared everywhere. What we're seeing now is the chasm journalists have to cross as the trade moves to a new online model.

Journalism won't die. There is a critical need for good reporters doing the legwork to dig out the stories and writing about them with healthy skepticism and insight. Blogs--including my own--just can't do that. You have to get paid a decent wage to do the legwork.

The new model to make online journalism work is really quite simple. It's just that no one is doing it. 

Google understands what the new model is. Late last year, Google CEO Eric Schmidt wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal, "How Google Can Help Newspapers." He describes a compact device for the year 2015. If you want to know what type of tablet computer/e-reader Google and Verizon are likely to unveil to compete with the Kindle and the iPad, read this description from Schmidt:

Even better, the device knows who I am, what I like, and what I have already read. So while I get all the news and comment, I also see stories tailored for my interests. I zip through a health story in The Wall Street Journal and a piece about Iraq from Egypt's Al Gomhuria, translated automatically from Arabic to English. I tap my finger on the screen, telling the computer brains underneath it got this suggestion right.

Some of these stories are part of a monthly subscription package. Some, where the free preview sucks me in, cost a few pennies billed to my account. Others are available at no charge, paid for by advertising. But these ads are not static pitches for products I'd never use. Like the news I am reading, the ads are tailored just for me. Advertisers are willing to shell out a lot of money for this targeting.

That's how it will be done. But Schmidt doesn't go quite far enough. Aside from providing these services on the reading device, across a nearly infinite number of news sources, these services need to be provided by online publications themselves.

Today's online pubs don't recognize their audience beyond their sign-in ID. They don't recommend stories that we may be interested in. Worst of all, their ads are completely irrelevant to our interests.

That's an artifact of the way the old-dog publishers traditionally dealt with print. They haven't yet learned new tricks.

If an online pub is well-tailored to a reader, she will be willing to pay a subscription. If the ads are properly targeted, they will actually bring in decent revenues.

But it's important that the news/features sites have these capabilities themselves, not just through a new tablet from Google. It's critical to maintaining loyalty to a particular publication. It's critical to bringing in loyal advertisers and revenues without paying a percentage to Google.

I would be willing to license the appropriate technology from Google to get this capability on a news/features site of my own.

Anybody want to provide some funding to try it?

It's Hate Google Week

I have to declare this Hate Google Week, where people from all walks of crime declare their disdain of the 'What, me evil?'  company.

Who's on the agenda so far?

Stop the Google/Admob Deal!

Sen. Herb Kohl, chairman for the subcommittee on antitrust, competition policy and consumer rights, wants the Federal Trade Commission to scrutinize the proposed deal.

(EWeek article to give you the facts that the Wall Street Journal article hides behind its golden firewall.)

Concern about competition. Would give Google 24 percent of mobile ad market. But since all big companies are evil, we can't let it buy anything that would let it take an independent competitor off the market.  

What happened to the days when a monopoly was not illegal unless it leverages its monopoly illegally to keep competitors out of the market? What happened to scrutiny of the deal between Microsoft and Yahoo, which takes the #2 search engine out of the market? (Search Engine Land article.)

Oh, yeah, that's right. Microsoft would never try to leverage its monopoly unfairly.

Visual artists sue Google over Book scanning

(Reuters article)

Photographers, illustrators and others want to make sure nobody sees their work again. Google Books could provide them with free marketing by showing off talent that rotting away on library shelves and will never make those artists another dime. Hey, Google, you don't pay, you don't play. Maybe Google can just black out all the art work in the books it scans. Then the artists won't have to worry about it being seen again.

They want tens of thousands of dollars per infringement of each illustration, for which they were originally paid maybe $2,000, tops. Oh, now I see the motivation. Nice scam if you can get it.

Rupert Murdoch is again threatening to block Google from sending readers to his news sites

Mad-Eye Murdy tells the National Press club, "We're going to stop Google and others from taking our content!"

MarketWatch article

Taking it where, exactly? I thought Google took readers to the full article, not the other way around. Oh, well, we all know, as McMurdy says, that all news sites will charge subscriptions anyway. It's not like you can find the news anywhere else on the Internet.

More to come?

Come on, folks, we've barely scratched the Google logo here. I'm sure we could get another lawsuit or two going. 

I know! Google just updated its Maps applet for the Blackberry. (Info Week article) Let's sue Google to stop it from providing apps for mobile phone providers. That'll keep it from getting any more of a monopoly on the Internet mapping market. Then we can sue it again for damaging those smart device suppliers by making them less competitive with Android phones, thus increasing the chances of an Android monopoly.

No news sites were harmed in making this column. Except maybe the Wall Street Journal.

For further articles on Google controversies, please visit RichardLBrandt.com. You can even link to it. I won't sue.

Google violates Kansas copyrights

Once again, Google has shown its blatant disregard for international copyright standards.

Earlier today, Google CEO Eric "Oh aren't I smart with my Ph.D©" Schmidt announced that the Mountain View, California company was changing its name to Topeka. 

Why? Because the city of Topeka, Kansas had supposedly given up the rights to that name when it announced it was changing its name to Google.

This argument doesn't wash any better than my uncle Ernie after a night drinking with the hoboes in U.N Plaza in San Francisco.©  

Google, sorry, Topeka, knew that the people of Topeka, sorry, Google, were only planning on making the change temporary.

The Topekans, sorry, Googlans, simply wanted to call attention to the fact that children in that city of 122,000 have never had the luxury of Web-surfing faster than 122K baud, 1,000 times slower than that enjoyed by children in more developed parts of the world like Singapore. The good people of Topeka, sorry, Google, Kansas want to convince Google, sorry, Topeka, to install a Singapore-speed© broadband network in its fair city. 

Google, sorry, Topeka, has promised to do that for any U.S. city willing to change its name to Google, sorry, Topeka, wait, I'm confused now. So that city-that-must-not-be-renamed in Kansas obliged, but only for a month.

I know that Google knew this change was temporary because, in another blatant copyright violation in its attempt to destroy mainstream media, Google CEO Eric "Oh, aren't I smart with my Ph.D" Schmidt's announcement actually linked to a CNN article that described Topeka's, sorry, Google's sad attempt to gain Schmidt's attention so that the children of Kansas might catch up to the technology of the "Singapore Age"©. In that article, mayor Bill "No, I don't have a PH.D."© Bunten said it was only for a month.

CNN, of course, is owned by Rupert Murdoch©, who has complained about Google, sorry, oh to hell with it, Google stealing his intellectual property by linking to his news articles. Dr. so-smart Schmidt is just trying to goad Murdoch© into doing something stupid, like blocking his news articles from Google searches. 

When is Google going to learn that EVERY WORD any American ever writes down or steals from a native American tribe is automatically copyrighted and nobody else has ANY rights to it? Just because Topeka is temporarily relinquishing the name, Schmidt cannot violate the city's copyright©. The city has exclusive rights to that name for 123 years past the death of the city's last living resident.

Please, write to your Congressman and ask the Justice Department to crack down on Google before it becomes any more powerful. Before long, it will have a monopoly on every city name in America©.

Let's face it, if this doesn't prove that Google is evil, nothing will. ©

Bill Gates vs. Sergey Brin: Succumb to Chinese censorship?

    We don't yet know whether Google will remain in China. Google's top attorney, David Drummond, says the company is negotiating with the Chinese government to ease some controls it maintains on the Internet and may have a decision within weeks.    

    I doubt if much will come of it. There can be no significant progress with China on the censorship issue. China is run by an isolated dictatorship, and the country has never had western-style freedoms. The Chinese Communist Party sees nothing wrong with controlling information and restricting free speech.

    In fact, David Bandurski, an analyst with the China Media project, tells the New York Times that control of information has become even more important to the Chinese government recently. (Yeah, I'd say that's probably since the Olympics, now that it doesn't have to worry so much about world opinion. Remind me again how holding the Olympics there was supposed to make China more open?)

    The Chinese censors are so entrenched they're laughable to outsiders like us. The NYTimes says that the Global Times, backed by the Chinese Communist Party, wrote an article about how the whole Google issue was initiated by the U.S. government as a joint campaign to take over the world:

“As the global landscape is undergoing profound irreversible shifts, the calculated free-Internet scheme is just one step of a U.S. tactic to preserve its hegemonic domination,” Yan Xuetong, who heads the Institute of International Studies at Beijing’s Tsinghua University, said in the article.

(Unfortunately, you can't find that article on the Chinese publication's web site. The most recent article on that site mentioning Yan Xuetong that I can find through a Google search is one dated August 10, 2009: (Global Times - Think tank scholar has more fresh ideas than old shoes).)

And I didn't even know that old shoes had fresh ideas. 

    That puts Google into a Chinese Pickle. If it remains in China now, it will take a big PR hit. If it does back out, Microsoft gets the PR hit because Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer have been shrugging their shoulders and asking What's So Bad About Censorship? Bill's latest comment to the NYTimes: If Google pulls out of China, "What point are they making?"

    So Google will not be able to claim it has made any progress with the Chinese government in the next few weeks. Sergey Brin has never been comfortable going along with the regime and would certainly like to abandon ship there. But if Google does leave China behind, it loses all chance of trying to improve the flow of information within China. That's a task that has but a sliver of a chance of success in the next decade or two anyway, but who knows what will happen in the next few decades?  

    But here's the real problem. Google--and all major online services--are voluntary censors. The Chinese must find it strange that Google can't publish books in the U.S. and Europe that are out of print because of copyright laws. In Germany, Google must censor neo-Nazi sites from its search engine (and who complains about that?) 

    In fact, some people complain when Google doesn't censor offensive stuff. A couple of years ago, management refused to block the search engine from pointing people to an anti-Semitic site called JewWatch. Bloggers angrily decried that decision as essentially condoning evil. Sergey (who is Jewish) publicly defended the company's position as an anti-censorship stance. And, of course, all the publicity increased traffic to the offensive site.

    But sometimes, Sergey feels the company has no choice but to remove material. Several years ago, for example, the Church of Scientology made a copyright claim against an anti-Scientology site that had excerpted text from the Church's writings. Sergey saw it as a free speech issue but had to back down because the anti-Scientology site did, removing the material rather than fighting.

    So who is right? What's the right thing to do? Unfortunately this is close to a no-win game for Google. The best it can do is make the issue a loser for Microsoft. 

    Unless Sergey can pull a fresh idea out of his shoe.

Google data stolen, China implicated, execs really pissed. What exactly was taken?

NOTE: FOR ONGOING COVERAGE OF THIS AND OTHER GOOGLE TOPICS, PLEASE VISIT MY WEB SITE.

RichardLBrandt.com

Big news from Google today. It has been detecting cyber attacks from China and a theft of "intellectual property." Google executives are so pissed off that they have decided to stop their self-censorship and to do as they promised several years ago and re-evaluate whether it will remain there at all. It is highly likely it will not, because China will never accept an uncensored search engine.

There are several things to say about this.

How much data was stolen?

First, exactly how big were the attacks, and what data may have been compromised either at Google or at the other companies where Google detected attacks? 

The announcement of the attacks in the Google blog says there was "theft of intellectual property from Google." The only thing it mentions is that a little info about the creation of Gmail accounts, such as the dates they were created and subject line, was compromised. Did the attackers get any other intellectual property from Google besides this info?

A Google spokesperson tells me, "So far we don't have any evidence of anything else" being taken. But phrase "so far" means they could still find more later. Also, the spokesperson says Google does not know what, if anything, may have been taken from or compromised at any of the other companies where it detected the attacks.

Should Google get rid of data sooner to protect privacy?

This shows that data is vulnerable, even when protected with Google's sophisticated safeguards. Google keeps data for nine months, but privacy and human rights advocates say it should be less and will certainly point to this example as a reason to cut the retention time.

But there's a dilemma here. On one hand, reducing the time information is kept would reduce the amount of vulnerable info. 

But on the other, Google's retained data may have helped it discover the attack. 

In an interview for my book on Google, I discussed both China and privacy issues with Google lawyer Nicole Wong. We discussed why Google keeps personal information for nine months. She spoke primarily of "denial of service" attacks, but it should apply to others. According to Wong:

"The fact of the matter is that the person successfully attacking us today has probably been trying for two years. So when we go back into the logs for a substantial amount of time, we're able to detect the pattern we have today."

Wong said that's one of the reasons they do not want to get rid of data any sooner -- that nine months is already a compromise. 18 months would be better.

Analyzing whatever data Google and the other companies have retained will now better equip them to better prevent similar attacks in the future. This debate will only intensify.

Were Microsoft and Yahoo also attacked? Who else?

Who were the other companies attacked? Google says it detected at least 20 other companies were similarly attacked, and the New York Times hears from experts that the number may be 34. Google, of course, would never reveal the names of the other companies it informed of the attacks, but it says: 

      "a wide range of businesses--including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors--have been similarly targeted."      

It would make sense that they were companies doing business in China. Companies with similar services at Google -- search engines and email systems -- seem obvious choices. Microsoft, Yahoo, Baidu? (But those are just guesses.) How safe is the info at any company doing business in China? 

Will any of the other companies that were attacked admit it? Google's stock dropped 1.77% today. Because of this news? Will other companies risk taking the hit? Is anyone else willing to leave China as a result.

I'll give you a hint on that one: No.

Did the Chinese government do it?

This was a sophisticated, well-funded attack. The New York Times says that servers in Taiwan and Texas appear to have been involved. Google's description of some of the attacks -- "highly sophisticated", "at least twenty other companies" targeted, the "primary goal" being trying to get info about "Chinese human rights activists" -- certainly suggests this was an attack by the Chinese government. Somebody had a lot of technology, time and money to do this.  The New York Times thinks so:

"Google did not publicly link the Chinese government to the cyber attack, but people with knowledge of Google’s investigation said they had enough evidence to justify its actions."

The U.S. government has to be investigating this as well. Another guess.

Google is pissed!

One thing is for sure. Google management -- and particularly Sergey Brin, who has always had misgivings about the decision to enter China -- are really pissed. The attacks tipped the debate in favor of withdrawing. Now I wonder if other companies will follow suit.

I'll give you a hint on that one also: See above.

Google insults, injures Nexus One customers

                            

Google News just took me to this article at WSJ about Nexus One users having trouble connecting to T-Mobile's 3G network. 

Says Google then adds insult to injury by ... Oops! You've got to subscribe to WSJ to get the full article. Let's see, type a couple keywords into my Chrome browser ...

Ah, yes, here's the full article that the WSJ ran, on a NASDAQ site instead -- for free. 

Says Google adds insult to injury by telling customers to submit email complaints but says not to expect an answer.

The NASDAQ site also has some nice ads...

Prediction: Journalism in 2021: Real reporters, Google, Salon.com and the death of Rupert Murdoch

Beginning of the decade predictions are wonderfully fun. For the columnists making them. 

But they're generally about as accurate as George W. Bush talking about ... well, pretty much anything. Except for those predictions as obvious as a Sunday morning hangover.

And the obvious is boring.

But why shouldn't I have fun at your expense? I'm a journalist. What else have I got to do?

So here's my expert prediction:

The fate of journalism over the next decade!

Ready? Here it comes:

More layoffs and less profit.

          

Oh, shit. 

Why will will this be? Because media "moguls" like Rupert Murdoch think they can fight the Google News ripoff machine and bypass the Google by hiding content behind Google-proof walls guarded by toll bridges. Take that, Larry and Sergey! Hahaha! You can't make money off me!

                    

Loser.

I meant the idea, not Mr. Rupert. No, really.

The problem is that everyone in the journalism biz seems to agree with the divine Mr. M., at least to the extent that they believe we should pay subscriptions for online news.

Hogwarts, I say. 

Won't work. You'll never keep your story exclusive for more than 27.43 seconds. I've timed it. Why pay to go to a site for a news story that I can find on a bazillion, two hundred thousand and six blogs who've repeated the story? You can't sue 'em all.

Mr. Rupert, Have you ever heard of Salon.com? Tried it. Didn't work. Dropped it.

                               

But wait! There's more! I have another prediction, one of a more enlightened time! The next, next big decade!

Journalism in 2021:

OK, this one is really good:

Real online news, written and reported by real journalists, who get paid real wages, supported by ...

advertising!

Huh? Wait. What? Everybody knows that nobody makes enough money off advertising to buy enough Preparation H for a year. Am I crazy?

I often ask myself that question.

                                                  

That's as may be. But I'm telling you, the future of journalism is online, and the future of online journalism is advertising. 

The problem is not that advertising-supported news is a bad idea for the 21st Century. It worked for most of the 20th Century. 

The problem is that Internet advertising sucks!

Let's go to Salon's home page. Any ads there for >Me<? OK, here we go. Click. 

Uh, a pop-up for a free audio book? Miss. (Books are meant to be read, not heard.) 

Acid reduction? Miss. (I haven't dropped any in years.) 

Berkeley MBAs? Miss. (Ick.) 

(I mean, who wants an MBA these days? Who wants an MBA grad to run their company any more? Or their state?

But I digress...)

Technology, yeah, that's the clicker...

I know! Let's go to the 'Tech and Biz' section of Salon in search of ads more interesting to tech readers! 

Berkeley MBAs again. Miss again. (Ick again.) 

TurboTax. Miss. (Nice try, but I use an accountant. The IRS would never believe my deductions otherwise.)

But wait! What's that over to the right? Ads by Pulse 36C:

Teeth whitener discovered by a mom. Miss. How a mom lost 57 pounds. Miss.

OK, and I'm insulted by the implications. I'm not a mom.

And how'd they get the name 36C?

                                             

But wait, there's one more more...

Aha! Something else, at the bottom. Ads by Google: 

Get Nexus One. Hit! (Once Verizon Wireless has it, I'm there.) 

I flip around looking for other Google ads. Natural skin care. Miss. (The Google must've seen me looking up skin rash medications. No, no, really, it's not that kind of a rash.) War on the Dollar Exposed! Miss. (The Google has probably been reading my emails complaining about government bailouts for everyone except >Me<.)

Of course, your results may vary.

Here's the score:

          Salon sales reps: Zero.

          Pulse 36C: Zero.

          The Google AdSense: One. And some scary insights.

          

OK the Google probably isn't feeding me ads based on my emails. Yet. Google ads still have a long way to go. But as imperfect as they are, Google ads collected $9 BILLION from advertisers in the third quarter of 2009.

Think how much better it will get as the Google learns more about me. But online pubs and most other web sites ain't even in the game, 'cept for a few AdSense ads stuck in the corner. 

So here's...

What we NEED for 2021:

Google should team up with some pubs, analyze where their readers go within that publication, use that data to figure out each reader's interests, add its other creepy magic tricks, and feed the readers great ads that actually interest them. 

The technology is there. Why aren't we? We just need some smart journalist to make it happen.

Know any?

Who says there's no future in advertising for online journalism? 

Oh yeah. Rupert Murdoch.

Well, he can't live forever.

                    (Special Advertising Section:)

"chockfull of new insights about one of the world’s most thoroughly scrutinized companies!"

-- Elise Ackerman, Silicon Beat.

Buy it now at bookstores everywhere!

Or at Amazon.com.

Disagreeing with Ken Auletta's opinions

              Ken Auletta's new book, “Googled: The End of the World As We Know It,” is out. I'm just starting to read it, and I'm sure it's very good. 

              But I'm going to jump ahead and address some opinions Auletta has expressed outside the book, based on what he learned from writing it. It's just my humble opinion, but I disagree with some of his conclusions. Patrick Phillips at iwantmedia.com got him to explain in an interview some of his views.

  

              Auletta claims that Google is now a media company. As evidence, he points out that Google has made production deals for others to create content for YouTube. And because of that, "tensions between remaining the Switzerland of search and pushing its own content will only grow."

Wrong and wrong. A media company creates media. Google is a media distributor. Yes, it owns companies that publish media, like YouTube and Knoll. But the content is still produced by others. Google may pay some people to create content, because we need more good content, not just videos of cute cats. 

 

              As for "pushing its own content," most other companies would do that, but Google does not. Before Google, all the "portals" did it -- and were then destroyed by Google's unbiased searches. Do a comparison between the hugely successful Wikipedia and Google's own lukecold Knol. Google searches put Wikipedia articles at the top of the search results, with Knol nowhere to be found. So where's the tension?

Google executives have a tendency to put the users' interests first, not their own. As long as they keep playing fair, there is no conflict here. Even Auletta points out that Google "is not obsessed with killing competitors; they're obsessed with eliminating inefficiencies." Knol didn't catch on because Wikipedia isn't inefficient -- a strategic error from Larry and Sergey that violates their own criterion. 

 

              Perhaps Google will someday try to buy Wikipedia. When it created its own unsuccessful video site, it couldn't compete with YouTube so it bought the company. I doubt that plan would work with Wikipedia, though. Too many people want it to remain an independent non-profit. Rightly or wrongly, they don't trust Google because it makes money.

  

              Auletta points out one step Google considered that would have put it at the center of the media business: "Larry Page and CEO Eric Schmidt told me that they had discussed buying the New York Times,” Auletta says, “but in the end decided that if they succeeded it would sabotage their identity as a neutral search engine." Doesn't that show that Google is trying to avoid conflict with the content providers it depends on?

 

              So why even consider such a step? CEO Schmidt has told me that he has grave concerns about what the Internet is doing to newspapers and other media. He'd like to figure out how to help, which probably led to the consideration of buying the Times. Google could probably figure out how to make money from online advertising linked to NYT content. 

           However, keep in mind that it's the Internet itself, not Google, that's destroying news outlets. If Google didn't collect and link to articles, someone else would, including bloggers. And nobody has demonstrated that those links, which drive traffic to the original sites, has done one iota of damage to publications' revenues.

 

             Auletta himself points this out, citing the "conundrum" for media companies. If they really don't like Google News, why don't they just opt out? Auletta explains, "Opt out of search and reduce the number of people exposed to your newspapers,” he says. “Opt in and risk becoming a commodity." That's why Rupert Murdoch is simultaneously claiming that Google is turning news into a commodity, while at the same time refusing to opt out of Google News. He's contradicting himself, betting that Google's search engine actually adds value to media sites. He cannot have it both ways. The media conundrum is self-inflicted.

 

              Here's an argument I strongly disagree with: Auletta asserts social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter are a threat to Google's search engine. In these sites, your friends point you to interesting items on the Internet. "That's a more trustworthy search result than a flood of anonymous search results," Auletta claims.

 

              Nonsense. Yes, friends can point out things of interest to you. But they won't replace search engines. Several search engines have tried to out-search Google by relying on “industry experts” to point to sites, on the theory that the results will be better than "a flood of anonymous search results." None of them have succeeded.

 

              Google has a different model, complementary to that of the social networks: Google masses together the interests of millions of people to find the most relevant sites. It's a different method, relying on the “wisdom of crowds,” and it often produces better results. I wouldn't be surprised to see Goolge buy Twitter or Facebook, though.

 

              One interesting observation from Auletta: the Google founders are often naïve. When Sergey told him that all books should be free online, Auletta asked him who was going to pay for the writers, editors, indexers, marketing and legal folks. Sergey changed the subject.

 

              I'm more optimistic than Auletta. He says he will never offer his books free online. "Writing is how I earn a living. For me 'free' would send me to the poor house." He seems stuck in the same mode of 'don't mess with my paradigm' as Murdoch and the other old-line business executives.

 

              Larry and Sergey may not have the answer – I'm not sure anyone does – but I am sure there is one. There always is. There's a demand for good writing, and where there's demand there is profit to be made. Somewhere out there, some clever person will come up with a new revenue model. Advertising seems the most likely to me.

            It may even benefit publishers. Right now they have to take a huge risk on what books to bet on, and if they don't sell, the bookstores get to send them back. If books are online (or sold through e-readers), the costs of bookstore returns, paper, ink and shipping are eliminated. They may be able to take more risks and give opportunities to lesser-known writers.

 

              And don't forget Google's controversial book search efforts. Whatever you think of it, Google is trying to make “orphan” books available again. Putting them online might provide more revenues by reviving sales if the book is re-published for the kindle. It's the only way to give orphan books a chance.

 

              Auletta, like executives running older and obsolescent businesses, just seems afraid to take that leap of faith to maintain relevance. That in itself is the best commentary on the conflict between the old world and the new.

Confession: I haven't taken the jump either, because I don't see the revenue model yet. But if I really want to write a certain book, and can't convince a publisher to give me an advance, I'll try an online model.

              I'm less pessimistic in general than Auletta, who seems very concerned about the companies Google is killing. True, the world will be different, and companies will die. But the industries will not. We're in a transition time, as is always the case when new technology changes the world. Existing companies always have an incredibly difficult time switching to new models, especially when it calls for cutting prices. They're used to making money one way, and understand how to make money from that approach. So they resist while new companies come along to exploit the new paradigm.

 

              Microsoft and Intel killed off old computer companies, but not the industry, which is bigger than ever. Google is now one of the companies killing off the old, like Microsoft. Think about the change required at Microsoft: In order to compete with the new “cloud computing” companies, it will have to stop selling $300 software programs and figure out how to offer them at greatly reduced prices (or for free and supported with advertising.) Would you like to be in charge of that transition?

 

              I'll write more when I've finished Auletta's book.

European court says 11-word extracts too much

What is wrong with these people? 

From Slashdot:

"The European Court of Justice, which is Europe's highest court, has ruled that a service providing 11-word snippets of newspaper articles could be unlawful. Media monitoring company Infopaq International searches newspaper articles and provides clients with a keyword and the five words either side. This was challenged by the DDF, a group representing newspaper interests, as infringing their members' copyright. The court has referred the issue back to national courts to determine whether copyright laws in each country will be subject to the ruling. The full ruling is available at the European Court of Justice website."

Haven't they ver heard of the concept of "fair use"? Most book authors relying on outside research couldn't survive without it.

Besides, this is the Internet. 11 words are only going to drive you to the original article, increasing readership.

Eejits.