New competitors everywhere
August 17, 2008 by grzegorz.piechota
Google looks for authors and pays for the content. Online Huffington Post launches its first local site. BBC internet service “will kill off local newspapers”.
The New York times asks: Is Google a Media Company?
Google’s new web service called Knol is 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.
The NYT writes:
“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.”
So is Google changing towards the content media company? Here are some comments gathered by the NYT.
- Wenda Harris Millard, the co-chief executive of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia: “If in fact a Google property is taking money away from Google’s partners, that is a real problem.”
- Jason Calacanis, the chief executive of Mahalo, a search engine that relies on editors to create pages on a variety of subjects: “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… They are competing for talent, for advertisers and for users [with content sites].”
- Richard Rosenblatt, the chief executive of Demand Media, a fast-growing online company that owns how-to content sites like eHow and ExpertVillage: “Assuming that Google treats Knol just like it treats other Web sites, it is just another company out there producing content.”
Huffington Post’s first local site in Chicago
A blogger Cory Bergman notes that:
“Huffington Post Chicago is now live (but not yet linked from the main Huffington Post). The only paid employee is Ben Goldberger, 25, a former Chicago Sun-Times staffer, who scours local news sites for links. Ad sales will be handled nationally by Huff Post. And contributors submit “featured posts” for free. [...] The plan is to launch a local Huff Post in all major markets.
Will Bunch, a columnist and a blogger at the Philadelphia Daily News, comments:
“With all its unfair built-in advantages, Huffington Post Chicago could actually help push one or even both of Chicago’s daily newspapers – both struggling mightily for different reasons – right to the brink of extinction. And if that happened, HPC would ultimately be shooting itself in the foot. If the Chicago Tribune disappeared, so would half of the actual news the Huffington Post now highlights.”
Daily Telegraph on BBC’s plans to “kill off local papers”
The BBC’s controversial plans to spend £68 million of taxpayers money boosting its local internet services have been criticised by local newspapers, who warn the project could kill their businesses. The UK state broadcaster plans to launch video-based news websites in 60 regions around the country – providing in-depth local coverage in every county. BBC plans to spend some 68 million GBP of taxpayers money (BBC does not sell advertising unlike many other European state broadcasters).
As the Daily Telegraph informs: the Newspaper Society, which represents the regional newspaper industry, has attacked the plan saying it threatens the very survival of local papers, from which the BBC sources much of its news.
In a 69-page submission to the regulator Ofcom, it said:
“It is a major development of the BBC’s activities which will compete direct with our members’ operations in a harmful fashion…
This service will ultimately be offered across every BBC platform and will therefore be in direct competition with every facet of any regional media company’s multimedia portfolio, whether mobile, website or broadcast.”
Join the debate
Is Google really behaving like a content company? Even if so, is it a threat to traditional content media? Are Huffington Post’s and BBC’s plans so dangerous to local newspapers, as some predict?
Tagged: advertising, blogs, business model, Case studies, competition, internet, local journalism
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Internet; a global medium that attracts users/readers mostly for local content. This is the truth, face it or die!