Google CEO Eric Schmidt envisions the news consumer of the future
For all the bluster about Google as an enemy of the news industry, you might be surprised to learn that Eric Schmidt, the company’s CEO, is kind of a triumphalist for mainstream media, big newspapers, and print.
He took questions from reporters this afternoon at Google’s offices in Cambridge, and I asked him, among other things, why Google News had recently begun attaching a “(blog)” label to some news sources — a move I criticized last month. Schmidt resorted to bringing up bloggers’ moms:
Me: A very small question. Google News very recently added a label for blogs, to differentiate from non-blogs. It seemed weird in 2009 to make that distinction. I wondered, did you have any input on that or —?
Eric Schmidt: I was not directly involved in that. There seems to be a difference between blogs and traditional news. It’s sometimes hard to distinguish because many people in the traditional news are also bloggers.
Me: Or they use a blog platform.
Schmidt: Or they use a blog platform. So we’re trying to find that line. And it’s hard to articulate what that difference is.
Me: How would describe that line if it’s not based on the tech behind the publishing platform?
Schmidt: No, it’s not the technology. My guess is — again, I’m speculating, which is always a mistake — it has a lot to do with the infrastructure around the writer. So a blog that’s associated with a major, legitimate organization — of which, I think, the majority, if not everyone, in the room is associated with — would be, I think, treated differently than an individual blogger who’s using his or her right of free expression to say whatever he thinks. So the presence of an editor, as an example. You know, an editor that’s not your mom.
That is, for what it’s worth, not the distinction Google News is making: The “(blog)” label is supposed to be attached to any news published with blogging software. At the time, I thought Google might be throwing a bone to newspaper companies that don’t like being lumped with amateur news sources. And while I’m sure the new label was not important enough to reach Schmidt’s desk, his framing of that distinction — “the infrastructure around the writer” — is an interesting one.
I also asked Schmidt about the concept of a “hyperpersonalized news stream,” coined by Google VP Marissa Mayer to describe a customized flow of information from a broad range of news sources. Does Google have aspirations to build on that concept?
Schmidt: We have about ten news stream ideas, of which hyperpersonalization is one. And, again, I’d rather not talk about specific products or even prioritize them, but I would make the following observation: In five or ten years, what will the primary news reader look like?
Well, that person will be probably on a tablet or a mobile phone, probably the majority of the reading will presumably be online not offline, just because of the scale of it. It’ll be highly personalized, right? So you’ll know who the person is. There’ll be a lot of integration of media — so video, voice, what have you. It’ll be advertising-supported and subscription-supported, so you’ll probably have a mixture. Think of the Kindle as an example. The Kindle is a proto of what this thing could look like. People will carry these things around.
So if you start thinking about that, it becomes pretty obvious what the products need to be: more personalized, much deeper, capable of deeper navigation into a subject. Also, show me the differential. Since you know what you told me yesterday, just tell me what changed today. Don’t repeat everything.
As some news organizations begin charging for digital content, I wondered, how is Google positioned to aid or take advantage of those moves? I mentioned the company’s proposal to power micropayments for news sites with Google Checkout.
Schmidt: The first question: What percentage of news organizations will charge for content? And it’s entirely their decision. If they do so, then we want to make sure that we have products that they can use to help them charge. Right? Because we’re in the infrastructure business. We respond. But, to me, that’s a relatively straightforward infrastructure decision. Could we get them to use Google Checkout, other payment systems, and so forth? But I think it’s early to talk about that.
We also, for newspapers that are trying to solve the revenue gap problem, we’re working hard on stronger advertising products for newspapers. And we’ll see how well they do, but it remains an unsolved problem. That’s probably all I — everything else is tied up in discussions with specific —
David Beard, editor of Boston.com, asked about a remark Schmidt made last month regarding Google’s “moral responsibility” to aid the news industry. Schmidt’s reply:
Schmidt: We have a responsibility. We have not yet figured out how to exercise that responsibility…We’re looking for new ideas. It’s a hard problem because, as everybody knows, printed circulation has declined, and the online use of newspapers has exploded positively. So you’ve got a bridge problem between one and the other, and we want to help. We really do.
A few other tidbits outside our purview:
— Schmidt said invite-only Google Wave is “getting ready for a much broader distribution…very soon,” which he clarified to mean within weeks.
— Surveying the laptops of reporters in the room, he said, “We’ve got a couple Macs — always my favorite.”
— And asked about something Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said, Schmidt replied, “I’ve learned not to respond to quotes by Steve Ballmer.”
“Bringing up bloggers’ moms” — zing.
Google link-throughs might increase our page views, but if you think advertisers in little old Stroudsburg, Pa., are dumb enough to believe the people who clicked from California and New Zealand are potential customers of their pizza stores, clothing stores and food stores, I’d be glad to sell you a piece of that action. We can get those outside-the-area eyeballs, but they don’t represent a real market demographic for 98 percent of our available online advertisers.
I work with the Google News team and wanted to provide more detail on our blog-labeling policy. It reads:
Google News strives to provide you with access to as many sources of news and perspectives on current events as possible. Many users have asked us to let them know when they’re clicking on a blog article in Google News. To satisfy this request, articles published in a blog format appear with a (blog) tag next to the publication name. (We add similar tags to video, press release, satire, and subscription content.)
Blogs typically identify themselves as such, and adhere to standard blog formatting by displaying regular entries in order from newest to oldest. Websites that organize their articles in a more editorial fashion and employ a complex layout are generally not considered blogs. We acknowledge the difficulty in characterizing blogs and the rapidly changing publishing landscape, but we also hope to provide useful ways of helping you select what you want to read. If you find a source in Google News you believe to be mislabeled, please send us the name of that publication, and we’ll review it.
The policy and a form for contacting us can be found on our Google News help center: http://www.google.com/support/News/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=164743
“more personalized, much deeper, capable of deeper navigation into a subject. Also, show me the differential. Since you know what you told me yesterday, just tell me what changed today. Don’t repeat everything.”
Doesn’t that mean that there will be different forms of content for different levels of consumption?
Not all news will be read on the mobile platform. The headlines and the appetizers will be, for sure. Shortform content may be looked at and interacted with while “mobile.” We will consume a large volume of information quickly this way. The result is there will be demand for longform content to be consumed and participated with in a more intensive way (the tool will not be as significant as the setting and motive). We may not consume as much volume of data this way, but we’ll spend a lot of time learning and participating with this content. Net: the facility to consume more information quickly will create more time for content we learn from and actively participate with.
The implication of all this is that packaging and brand marketing are going to be much more critical to the future of media. I did a post called 2020 this week http://bit.ly/4xMi2L that imagines what the media marketplace will look like when, media programming companies, ranging from Disney to Harpo to Time to McClatchy, buy content, technology, package them and market them as brands.
This interview is another proof that Google is well prepared to become a newspaper on its own. With more and more newspapers dying and more and more journalists dismissed and eager to produce news in their blogs, you can imagine what will happen … a news (market) metamorphosis will take place.
I think that one of the reasons Google probably decided to add a “blog” label to their news stream is not to say that blogs are less legitimate but to protect themselves from accusations that they are reporting opinions as news. By adding a “blog” label they simplify things so they don’t have to label it “editorial” – which is essentially the role many blogs play. While some blogs are making a reputable name for themselves others have absolutely no guarantee of truth and no desire to provide one. By labeling all blogs google can claim innocence if one of the blogs they source says something untrue.
After seeing the changes in the 40 years since I entered the professional of journalism I can see the following scenario in the not-distant future: newspapers running streams of news on-line with different entry levels for the different requirements of readers – (a) those who follow news regularly, (b) the occasional/casual reader who is tickled by some sudden development, (c) the indifferent reader who wants sometimes to know where he is living.