Google and Content: Who Beat Boudicca?
May 25, 2015
I love it when “real journalists” adopt a tone somewhere between “I can’t believe I am going to be in the Financial Times” and “Folks, I have no clue what I am talking about.” Navigate to “They Give Us Free Computing Power and We Reveal Ever More about Ourselves.” You will have to register or pay to read this article in the Financial Times. Yep, that’s the colorful orange newspaper sometimes given away for free when there is a big conference in New York or London.
The article saddles up a tired old nag:
…let us imagine you read this piece, or other FT content, for free on Facebook or Google. It is a far sweeter deal, right? You get something for nothing and Big Data can bask in its own beneficence. Apply that to any amount of diverse content. Rarely in the history of human knowledge have so few offered so much to so many for nothing.
The article explains what most Internet users already know: Google sells ads. The free service is a means to display those ads in front of eye balls. Got it.
The article then strolls down the well-trodden monopoly path. Okay, got it. Google has a market share estimated from 65 percent to 90 percent of the online search traffic. Well, maybe. But the monopoly thing is what results when there is control of tea, cotton, and other products which people perceive to have value.
The write up reminds us that Google has finally figured out how the US system works. Paying money to lobbyists is more effective than Mr. Brin’s wearing sneakers and a T shirt to visit elected representatives of the citizens of the US.
I like the reference to Rome. It evokes images of Boudicca harnessing a somewhat more fit horse named Hope to her cart. How did that turn out?
As I recall she lost at the Battle of Watling Street by a non-feminist, meat eating fellow named Gaius Suetonius Paulinus. Like many large publishing companies, Boudicca miscalculated. There was no European Commission or NATO force to help her out. After getting trapped, Boudicca allegedly killed herself. Poison or maybe from a wound inflicted by the frisky Romans. I think my professor Dr. Phil Crane offered two possibilities.
Real journalists may want to figure out how to flee Google’s clutches, thus avoiding the need to commit suicide or death at the pleasure of a fickle Rome-like ruler.
Like Boudicca, time may have run out. Google’s been chugging along on essentially the same trajectory for more than 15 years. It is easy to complain. It is more difficult to take meaningful action. The options may not be appealing, however.
Stephen E Arnold, May 25, 2015
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