Does Google Short Content Providers?

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on on how Google is shorting media companies and content providers:

“The truth is what Google is doing now is transferring the wealth out of the hands of rights holders into Google. So media companies around the world are all threatened by Google. Why? Because basically Google is telling you how much of your ad revenue you get to keep.”

But then, this is the nature of the web. Content aggregation offers challenges and opportunities for content providers.

Gone are the days of wondering whether media companies can hide their content being “pay-walls” – the web has forced them to open up, or risk being missed by a new generation readers.

Social news sites continue to evolve. Read/Write Web reviews social news websites digg, Netscape, Newsvine and Reddit.

But of course, people are not just helping to aggregate content, they are creating it. Jeremiah Owyang looks at the huge increase in user generated content.

BBC News Deputy Director Adrian Van Klaveren sums it all up in an interesting way:

  • Yesterday was all about the editorial
  • Today is all about the packaging
  • Tomorrow will be all about the device and distribution

While I agree that we will all be looking at how to better leverage mobile content in the near future, I wouldn’t say that content and context are old news. Washington Post Editor Len Downie Jr. says this of new media’s affect on journalism:

“Our overall audience for our journalism is huge compared to what it was… It’s improved our journalism a lot, more than we could imagine.”

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