It’s
been three years since Google launched Google News. Three
years – that is unbelievable. I use Google News more than
any other site, perhaps even Google itself. Like many Google
properties, I learned about it from a friend. In typical
Google fashion, it relies not on people but machines.
Whereas a typical news site might employ tons of editors,
Google employs technologists instead. None of the site
relies on human decision making, save the logic
behind what it considers to be important stories. Certainly
remarkable is its ability to make the user forget that no
humans are involved. Hardly will one look at a particular
story and wonder why it is there. If you are like me, you
might wonder why the Xinhua, the official news agency of
China, consistently pops up among the top news feeds.
https://www.lynxtrack.com/signup.php
What some people have wondered, though, is what does News do
for Google. When I first started using Google News, I
figured, what a great deal for the news services. Google
doesn’t frame their landing pages like some other sites. No,
as a service to the readers, once you click, you go straight
to the news site – not in a new window but in the same
browser window. Classic Google. You will not find a target
blank in any of their links. As is the case with all their
products, it is all about information and making it more
accessible for the user. Their beauty is that they typically
do this in a way that makes them money. What makes Google
News different is that there doesn’t appear to be a
monetization strategy… not now, and potentially not in the
near future.
Not that I really noticed, but Google News is
still in “Beta.” For such a refined product, it hardly
seems like it is still in Beta. Among the reasons that it no
longer appears in Beta is that is has captured not only a
large user base but has also earned a spot on the coveted
front page. If one peruses the Google Labs section of the
site, you’ll find many cool ideas that have existed longer
than News but haven’t made it out of the back pages. The
majority of those products that have made it out of Google
do so because they make money not just because they are
popular. As mentioned above, Google doesn’t seem to care
whether it makes money.
One journalist criticized Google for that fact.
What I didn’t realize is that Yahoo and MSN make millions
per year off their news sites for what appears to be a
similar service – an aggregation of news that links to the
news page. It was suggested that Google would be legally
prevented from putting ads up on its news page due to a
concept known as “fair use.” Not being a lawyer I can only
surmise what “fair use” implies – people don’t want you
making money off what they think they own. I am probably a
little naďve in wondering what the big deal is. Google in my
opinion is helping out these other news sites by driving
traffic their way, and for free.
To suggest that Google made a mistake by
creating the News service the way they did might be a little
short-sighted. know that if I were to create a top 10 property
that attracted millions of visitors monthly, I might be a
little disappointed to find out that I could not make the
big bucks its popularity would normally garner. To shut it
down for that reason would also be short-sighted, and
chances are Google not only has thought this through but
knew it from the beginning. For a company that doesn’t
ostensibly spend a lot of money on outside marketing, they
have quietly built one of the most amazing and powerful
brands. I think it safe to say that Google News represents
their form of marketing. Rather than blast money on the TV,
they create value for the end user that makes it appear as
though they are doing something truly altruistic. And
when one’s business is built on a recurring user base and
less on new users, it makes sense to build a bond that would
make your users more likely to use your services.
Does the Google News study apply to those of us
in the direct marketing space? Of course it does. We all
have customers. We all have people that could benefit from
our thinking slightly outside of the box, helping them in
ways that don’t appear obvious or likely, knowing that in
the end that will make us more money. The beauty
of Google is that they, more so than others, are able to
quantify short term costs compared to potential long term
gains. As I tend to believe, Google provides us all with
better access to information, not just those that use it to
search.
