Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), which has taken away valuable advertising dollars from traditional media companies, is the enemy of the industry.
No, Google, with its tremendous utility and popularity among news junkies, is the media’s savior.
You decide.
The state of the media
One outcome is clear in this digital revolution, despite whatever conclusion you have already reached. The search giant stands as the most important and revealing component of the recently distributed Pew Research Center’s “The State of the News Media 2013” report.
That’s because Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) is the most influential company in the space, the one that has single-handedly caused the most seismic shifts in the media ecosystem. The restless, highly ambitious organization promises yet to continue to shape what we know of as the media industry.
Google represents the major change in what we refer to as “the media industry.” Approximately a decade ago, I once got into hot water with a New York Times writer when I suggested in print that Google wasn’t even a “media company.” Since then, I have seen the light. Yes, Google surely is one because it does what a time-honored media operation has always done: disseminated news and information. Just ask any journalist in an American newsroom from Miami to San Francisco whether he or she uses Google (and quite often, at that) to do reporting. Case closed.
At the same time, Google is anything but a traditional “news” outfit, mind you. Don’t look for Google to expose the president’s crimes, like The Washington Post so gloriously did during its Watergate investigative reporting. But if some news organization did just that, chances are good that you’d first read all about it — in some aggregated form — you betcha, on Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG).
No, it doesn’t have an original-reporting footprint to speak of. But don’t let appearances fool you. Google is the beast of the media industry, particularly as the action shifts away from the Internet to the mobile-devices arena. The mobile area is currently the media’s flavor of the month
“If there is one fact that neatly sums up the predicament news organizations face, it is this,” the Pew report pointes out. “Google, long the dominant player in search ads, has now extended its lead to the rest of the digital advertising market. In 2012, it also became the largest player in display advertising and the nascent market of mobile ads.”
Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) is truly the 900-pound gorilla in the media’s room. Let’s face it. This is nothing new, really. Google has been flexing its muscle for many years in profound ways. As soon as “Google” became a popularly accepted verb for searching online for information, the mystique of the media’s archives dissipated tremendously. Plus, the ease and convenience of Google virtually put media company’s libraries out to pasture during the recent slowdown in advertising revenue for media companies across the board.
The future
What about the future? How will Google play a part in it?
Pew, again, provides a glimpse into what looms — and guess which company will likely play a huge role? Tablets that are based on Google’s Android operating system represented about 41% of the global tablets that were shipped during the third quarter of last year, according to the market research outfit Strategy Analytics. This connotes a big divergence from the identical period of two years before, when Android tablets comprised less than 1% of the market, the Pew report observed.
Google’s prominence threatens to be even more far-reaching in years to come. The company now has reached the exalted position of a popular-culture and a business force, a rare combination. Perhaps only Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) can rival Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) in this century in terms of both its business prowess and its fingerprints on our society.
