AFTER years of being characterised by many in the newspaper industry as thieves – freeloading aggregators of information, pillagers of content produced by the efforts of others – Google is sending the industry a message: We’re here to help. That was the message delivered last month by Google chief executive Eric Schmidt to a group of newspaper executives in Washington. Alan Noble, head of engineering at Google Australia, delivered the same message in Melbourne last week at a presentation for the Committee for Economic Development of Australia.
There are three parts to Google’s vision of how media and communications will develop in the next decade: the continuing spread of social networking; the rise of the cloud; and the impact of mobile technology. ”The internet is a remarkable force, a platform for innovation, and much of that innovation can be quite disruptive,” says Noble. ”But we believe that innovation and the disruption that comes with it is fundamentally a force for good.”
Noble says that the onus is on media companies to take advantage of the internet to develop new business models and new ways of engaging with audiences. ”Google doesn’t think it has all the answers but we certainly have some ideas about how that can be done.”
Noble says we need to understand that how people consume information is changing. The ”millennial generation” – those born into the digital age who know nothing else – look first to their social networks for news, then to more formal sources.
The good news, says Noble, is that young people are consuming more news than ever. ”Teenagers are reading more news – something like 25 or 30 per cent more – than they were a decade ago,” he says. ”They’re just not reading newspapers.” Time to open a paper is a ”bit of a luxury” for Noble, he says. He gets his news from social networks, RSS feeds, Google Reader and Twitter. ”The social web can make journalism even better because the audience is not going to consume news passively but is going to engage with it, they’ll pass it on saying you really must read this article. It’ll even help media organisations grow their audience.”
”The caveat,” says Noble, ”is that you must be relevant. As long as you retain relevance there are boundless opportunities.” Schmidt’s message to the media can be boiled down to one line: ”We’re all in this together.” But is Google on a PR mission to spread the idea that quality content and the traditional media must survive, because its own fortunes are bound up with them?
”We absolutely recognise the importance of ensuring that quality content – quality newspapers – not only survive but thrive. ”Connecting users with captivating, engaging stories is as vital to our business as it is to a media company.”
source: news.com.au
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10 26th, 2011| 
