Real people make real stuff in a real world. Brands don’t have a loyal following like they did in the past. Google seems to destroy brands or at least the relationship between brands and consumers while it promotes its own brand. As for Business Week, they seem to be competing with themselves. If you have a print publication, having a blog is redundant. I guess it’s like having cash and using a credit card because it’s just easier. The credit card is ad supported but cash is premium. Google is so big that you can’t compete. As a result Google has to compete with itself. It is in it’s own class and people want in and there will be a small group of insiders and a mass of outsiders trying to get in or figure it out or figure out how to get in. GM is trying to figure out how to get insiders to be outsiders and the insiders are worried. Designing a car is technical. Making a profit on the final product is difficult, even with unlimited advertising or a million dollar ad budget. Making 10% on a $15,000 car is difficult. Google gives a great return on investment unless you are in the automobile business and then Google won’t do much for your bottom line. As a result local car dealers go out of business and people lose jobs. Google is hiring. Can you learn to make nothing and make a whole lot of it?

Clicking on this link brings one to a help wanted ad on a site called Thingamajob.com. This practice is certainly deceptive, if not outright fraudulent ,and probably ineffective as advertising. The question is, who was paid to place the ad, Google, the Times, or both?

I provide the links on my blog, Hogan’s Alley.

Google’s standard content licensing agreement requires publishers to continuously send Google content for 2 years, and publishers cannot cancel the contract… Let’s say for example if the publisher is acquired by a Google competitor.

So if Yahoo buys the publisher, Yahoo’s subsidiary must continue sending content to Google Local.

“ranting opinions, misleading info, and all out stupidity.”?

Big Media turned that into a multi-billion dollar business.

There are good blogs out there and they will be discovered.

Google hosts my blog for free. I find its maps preferable to other websites. The search engine is obviously very useful.

In fact it is easier to find a specific restaurant through google than it is through citysearch.

Robert,
I don’t think they create content but they create a new content product using content, if that makes sense.

Sure, it is what all phone books and indexes do, it is even copyrightable, but for Google I think this is just a stepping stone. If they just present the same financial data as other sites the only thing they have going for them is arrangement and presentation. We read your blog because of what you (and others) have to say, not primarily to follow the citations. Novel content, I think, is what will make for successful web destinations.

Blogs create content, for example - even when the springboard is an existing news story.

It’s a great point. I wonder, though, whether they already starting moving towards this direction with Google Video, where they have done deals with CBS etc and clearly have their eyes on getting more content out of Time Warner via the AOL deal. What do you think?

Seems your reasoning is that Jeff is not condemning Google [altho not rahrah-ing] so that means he’s on the take? Does that apply to anything else positive he says? negative?

I get paid so much for my opinions, but I go on having and expressing them anyway.

aren’t blogs better than them ?

you probably got a super secret deal…google will pay you millions to
use buzzmachine content on googles front page.

screw old media .