Jun 11 2007
What should Google do? [WSGD?]
A $10 shovel or a $20,000 work of art?
Well, it’s both. Back in 1916 Marcel Duchamp opened his first exhibition of readymades with a sign: “Who cares who made them, I chose them!”. The notion that discovering a product could be more profitable than making one, was a novel idea, and caused some consternation.
That was before Google.
As Google’s profits have risen so has the resentment levelled against them. Last year Jakob Nielsen complained
Search engines extract too much of the Web’s value, leaving too little for the websites that actually create the content…..Liberation from search dependency is a strategic imperative for both websites and software vendors.
A year later “liberation” from Google and Yahoo or their successors seems very unlikely. But the resentment remains. Much of it emanating from media conglomerates whose drop in profitability and audience are a mirror image of Google’s rise.
In a recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle Neil Henry bemoans the Chronicle’s $1 million a week losses and posits Google as both scapegoat and savior:
It stands to reason that Google and corporations like it, who indirectly benefit so enormously from the expensive labor of journalists, should begin to take on greater civic responsibility for journalism’s plight….Is it not possible for Google and other information corporations to offer more direct support to schools of journalism to help ensure that this craft’s values and skills are passed on to the next generation?
As many journalists and bloggers have pointed out Neil Henry’s arguments bespeak arrogance with regard to old school journalism and ignorance with regard to new media.
Like many industry pundits he seems loathe to consider the possibility that the decline in readership may be the responsibility of publishers, editors, and journalists rather than Google.
That possibility on the other hand does not seem to be off-limits for the American public. Why should Google assume responsibility for failing enterprises which have the respect of less than a third of the American public?
But wherever the responsibility lies it is undeniable that without salaried journalists our knowledge and understanding of the world will be greatly diminished.
The notion that market forces will miraculously ensure high standards of journalistic integrity is voodoo.
Historically Big Media has always been subsidized by corporations and individuals whose motives have not been entirely centered around the bottom line. Why shouldn’t Google and Yahoo join the illustrious pantheon who have championed the values of a free press?
Surely amongst the 1000s of subtle thinkers who make up the googleplex there must be hundreds who recognize that Google’s lifeblood is the free dissemination of information.
The vitality of that free flow is dependent, at least in part, upon organizations and enterprises which promote the value of information exchange not as a commodity but as a fundamental social good.
What use the information super-highway if we cannot rely on the information it delivers?
[BONUS LINK] - Interestingly pundits who were quick to jump on Neil Henry for suggesting that Google subsidize old school journalism are strangely silent when a NYTimes editorial encourages the Bancroft family to do essentially the same thing, by protecting the WSJ from the “unfettered demands of quarterly earnings“.
