Is Google a Media Company?

Ed: Yahoo has traditionally been a content provider. Google focused on search to redirect traffic. 

Now, Google wants to control more users at sites it owns. Yahoo recently changed the MyYahoo page to directly link the destination, getting rid of the pop-up panel for partner content. The pop-up earned Yahoo zero dollars. The change does shift ad revenues from feed adnets to embedded adnet companies.

How the web changes, day by day.

Is Google a Media Company?

By MIGUEL HELFT

Published: August 10, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO — Type “buttermilk pancakes” into Google, and among the top three or four search results you will find a link to a detailed recipe complete with a photo of a scrumptious stack from a site called Knol, which is owned by Google.

Illustration by The New York Times

Google envisions Knol as a place where experts can share their knowledge on a variety of topics. It hopes to create a sort of online encyclopedia built from the contributions of scores of individuals. But while Wikipedia is collectively edited and ad-free, Knol contributors sign their articles and retain editing control over the content. They can choose to place ads, sold by Google, on their pages.

While Knol is only three weeks old and still relatively obscure, it has already rekindled fears among some media companies that Google is increasingly becoming a competitor. They foresee Google’s becoming a powerful rival that not only owns a growing number of content properties, including YouTube, the top online video site, and Blogger, a leading blogging service, but also holds the keys to directing users around the Web.

“If in fact a Google property is taking money away from Google’s partners, that is a real problem,” said Wenda Harris Millard, the co-chief executive of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia...

Opinion: Is Google closer to becoming a media company after releasing Knol?

Posted by Alisa Zykova on August 11, 2008 at 12:49 PM

Knol, Google's Wikipedia rival, may be inciting fear in media companies as they increasingly begin to see it as a competitor, reported The New York Times (NYT). Knol features user-generated content which authors have control over and which Google may pay for through advertising. 

"Google can say they are not in the content business, but if they are paying people and distributing and archiving their work, it is getting harder to make that case," saidJason Calacanis, chief executive of Mahalo, a search engine that employs editors to write on different subjects. 

Google will not own the copyright to Knol content and neither will the website contain the Google logo. The company's aim is to guide people towards the "answer" they want and it doesn't intend to own or create any content, said Google spokesmanGabriel Stricker. Knol allows people to create and publish information and the only role that Google has in this is to "organize that information", according to Stricker. 

While some people like Wenda Harris Millard, co-chief executive of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, worry about the bias of Google search results, Stricker said that if Knol pages do rank high, it is because they "earned their position", reported the New York Times.

Calacanis expressed concern about Google overtaking search results, which may "alienate Web publishers that are Google's advertising partners" although Google might not actually "artificially favor its sites", reported the NYT.

Google currently owns YouTube, blogging service Blogger and Usenet archives, a digital discussion board collection that is older than the Web. Google also digitalizes books that show up on search results as well as containing stories from theAssociated Press in its Google News service and publishing stock market information on Google Finance. 

NEWS: Yahoo’s Starting Point: A Clearer Strategy

Yahoo’s Starting Point: A Clearer Strategy
New York Times - United States

The “Starting Point” idea, as Ms. Decker explained it, implies two breaks from Yahoo’s past. First, instead of spreading the peanut butter of its efforts across hundreds of sites, it will devote the bulk of its resources to the handful of sections that get the most traffic: the home page, search, news, e-mail and a few others.

Second, the measure of success becomes how often users visit, not how long they stay. That encourages the company’s product designers to be more liberal in linking to other sites and opening Yahoo’s interface to a variety of outside applications and partnerships. You can see some of that in Yahoo Buzz, its Digg-like news site, which often provides links to other sites on Yahoo’s home page.

“When we think of ourselves as a starting point, rather than a destination, all of us become more focused on simplifying users’ lives,” she said.