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Google and Newspapers: Who's Getting the Long Range Benefit

Washington Post: Google Set To Expand Newspaper Ad Program. But to hear newspaper executives and analysts tell it, the outlook is more cautious. They said Google has brought in new advertisers, such as small companies outside their distribution areas looking to build more awareness for their products. But Google’s online ad technology is so new that it remains unclear how much it will help newspapers, they said.

Google is in business for Google, and in the long run it’s in direct competition with newspapers. If executives don’t keep that in high focus, they will regret jumping this particular shark in the end.

1 Comment on “Google and Newspapers: Who's Getting the Long Range Benefit”

  1. #1 Delia
    on Dec 27th, 2006 at 6:31 pm

    re: “For now, Google is taking no commission for brokering ad sales, though it intends to do so later. Such finer points of how a business relationship might work between newspapers and Google have yet to be worked out.”

    Dan:

    This is what I was talking about… Larry and Sergei are upfront about it (this is a business move and the players’ expectation is that Google will look after it’s financial interest, not necessarily nickel and dime everything but even if they don’t start by charging there is no suggestion that Google is not in it for the money).

    Now, it *seems* to me that if this would have been one of Craig’s enterprises it would have STARTED something like this:

    “We just want to help folks out, ok? How much money does a guy need, anyways?” (“just trust our fabulous moral compass and … no! I’m not gonna tell you how much I will *profit* from this down the road — that just confuses me silly!” – well… It should! It certainly doesn’t make any sense to me, either…)

    Delia