It’s almost unthinkable that someone doesn’t use Google — perhaps many times a day, at that — to find out every nugget of information. Facts to help you do your job better? Surely. Statistics about a sports team? Naturally. The background of someone you have just met and want to learn more about? Absolutely. The latest celebrity gossip? Duh.
“News organizations are increasingly dependent on Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) and a handful of other tech firms for the tools and platforms needed to reach their audience,” the Pew report said.
This is evident to any media professionals who have seen their reporters and editors rely so heavily on Google as the foundation of their research. And it will continue.
Mobile
The new frontier is the mobile world. Mobile represents the continuation of the Internet, which achieved prominence because if offered convenience to the max.
“Fully 64% of tablet owners say they got news on their devices weekly and 37% report that they do so daily,” according to findings from a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center and The Economist Group. And, it seems, the bigger the news event, the more successful the mobile devices are in giving users the scoop.
Pew’s State of the Union piece pointed out that Katie Zhu, a mobile app developer at NPR, has noted in a blog post that mobile covered 50% of the traffic from their election night app feature that tracked electoral votes. “Typically, NPR gets just 10% to 20% of its traffic from mobile,” Pew notes.
The importance of tablets is undeniable. Today, roughly 31% of adults now own a tablet device, nearly three times the share compiled in May of 2011, and 45% of the adult population possesses a smartphone, up from 35% during the same time period, Pew tells us.
This is manna from heaven for the news industry, as users rely on smartphones to receive their information nowadays, just as only a few years back they depended on their clunky old home and office computers. This revelation presents challenges to media executives and journalists, who now must scramble to meet the demand for information via tablets.
Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), of course, figures to be omnipresent on cellphones, tablets, and every other device in this arena. The company has demonstrated a remarkable lack of complacency as it seeks to dominate every business it gets into. Google should teach television, radio, newspaper, magazine, and online companies two valuable lessons that are essential to thrive, and not merely survive, in this digital age:
1. Don’t rest on your laurels.
2. Be willing to change with the times.
If you don’t, Google will crush you.
The article Is Google Killing — or Saving — the Media Industry? originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Jon Friedman.
Fool contributor Jon Friedman owns no stock in any of the companies mentioned in this column. The Motley Fool recommends Apple and Google. The Motley Fool owns shares of Apple and Google and has a disclosure policy.
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