Google Wants to Be a Publisher

Google is an odd duck, apparently making money in and around what publishers of all shapes and sizes do. The theme, as most analysts have seen it, has been search and advertising. Look at a New York Times article from yesterday about the problems the company has had in selling radio and television advertising. In calling Google's growth "insane," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer called it a "search and advertising" business. I'm starting to think that pretty much everyone has been getting it wrong.

For a moment, stop thinking about Google's categories and start looking at what it does: find content, develop new ways of presenting the content, act as a conduit between content and users, wrap advertising in and around the content. Search? That's only on-demand real time content sourcing. Google isn't a search engine or even an information distributor. Google is looking to become the world's largest publisher.

Add it up. Search is important when content is decentralized, as it is today. Partnerships to put books online are important when there vast audiences will never fit into even at the largest university library. Video is just more content for another form of publishing. As are images. As are maps, and business information, and business directories, and product pricing lists, and blogs. And what if print publications try to keep Google from making money on their content? There is always revenue sharing, or when, as the story mentions, you can easily talk about hiring a thousand television ad salespeople, why not add writers and videographers and audio producers all around the world? The company certainly could, and then publish that information in what is probably the single largest destination for content around. What do you think Google News is? Or Google Blogs? They are publishing.

That's why scaling up so quickly is important. A search engine can find content, but it takes people to really create it. And if Google doesn't stumble, I can't think of a single "media" company that could hope to catch up. All they can do is cooperate and pray that they join the chosen partners. However, when business is decentralized, the partners may be very small, and the publishers may have bigger nightmares than they realized.