June 12th, 2006
Google Redefines the Media and Tech Business
Never before in the history of business has the collision of two industries caused so much confusion. According to CEO Eric Schmidt, Google is not in the media business:
It’s better to think of Google as a technology company. Google is run by three computer scientists, and Google is an innovator in technology in our space. We’re in the advertising business  99% of our revenue is advertising-related. But that doesn’t make us a media company. We don’t do our own content. We get you to someone else’s content faster.
99% of their revenue is from advertising. 99%!!! And that’s not media?!?
Then what the hell is media?!?!?
According to Schmidt, being in the media business requires doing your “own content.”
Tell that to MySpace and every other site that is living off user-generated content. Sorry, News Corp, you got out of the media business when you purchased MySpace because it’s not your own content!
I don’t want to quibble over definitions — and I know the vogue business strategy right now is to try it and see what happens.
But with so much rapid disruption, the one thing that players in media/technology or technology/media (or whatever!) should count on as they get out there and experiment is that the landscape will continue to transform radically around us like some freaky sci-fi movie.
A company that makes $6 billion in ad revenue isn’t a media company.
And yet Microsoft, the Goliath of technology companies, wants to be in the media business.
Total wackiness!
Topics: Google | Media Economics | Microsoft | Web 2.0
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Didn’t myspace change their TOS to reflect that, in fact, they do own your content? Or is that just a rumor? I’m woefully ignorant of most things MySpacian.
[…] My friend Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0 is quite right to be aghast that anyone would think Google isn’t a media company — after all, about 96 per cent of its revenue comes from advertising, which is something we all associate with media companies. And John Battelle makes a similar point, for which he gets props from none other than Henry Blodget himself, the former Merrill Lynch tech-analyst kingpin, who notes that “you are what you sell,” and Google sells advertising. […]
It seems to me that media is all about distributing content. I don’t see why it would have to be your own. Google is all about content … finding the content it thinks you want and letting you see it. That puts them pretty close to being a media company these days.
Correct me if I’m wrong - but doesn’t Google own Blogger??? Sounds like a media company to me.
Hmmm, I kind of see your point. A magazine is basically a collection of articles with advertising thrown in, only the writers are supposedly on staff. However, look at the typical newspaper these days where a good majority of the articles, including the comics, are all from wire services. Not much different from Google, except they don’t even pretend to have writers on staff. It’s just an evolution of an already occuring phenomenon.
“It’s better to think of Google as a technology company. Google is run by three computer scientists, and Google is an innovator in technology in our space. We’re in the advertising business  99% of our revenue is advertising-related. But that doesn’t make us a media company. We don’t do our own content. We get you to someone else’s content faster.”
In a way Google is right because most people consider Google as a tech company not a media firm. So, we can define Google as a tech company who is acting like a media company.
re in the advertising business  99% of our revenue is advertising-related. But that doesn’t make us a media company. We don’t do our own content. We get you to someone else’s content faster”link
Google Redefines the Media and Tech Business We’re in the advertising business ― 99% of our revenue is advertising-related. But that doesn’t make us a media company.
[…] Now that Google is offering free ad-sponored video content — what we used to call TELEVISION — is there anyone left on the planet besides Eric Schmidt who thinks Google isn’t a media company? I’m sure Rupert Murdoch would love to give his stock price a boost by insisting that News Corp is a technology company. […]
[…] So don’t believe Eric Schmidt for a second — Google is now the archetypal media company — online video is just the next step in their quest to monetize the world’s content through advertising. The challenge for Google is that video ads are at the opposite end of the annoying/consumer-hating spectrum from text ads. […]
denying that it is a media company