Comments on: Is Google a content company now?

By: Jasonp107

Jasonp107 — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 04:49:40 +0000

Google may or may not want to be in the content business, but it more or less is, given that the distinction is no longer whether you *create* content but where and how you serve it. YouTube is a content business. Google owns YouTube.

In many ways, Google is the ULTIMATE content business. It is the company that provides the best dashboard to the web's content, and it serves ads alongside a sizeable portion of it.

What MacFarlane's cartoons are doing in the middle of AdSense I don't really know. My best guess is that Google is trying to work on the “blind spot” that internet users have developed towards the google ad boxes.

By: TomForemski

TomForemski — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 04:17:49 +0000

I'm not sure I understand how this is not advertising…

Even if it wasn't advertising this is far from making GOOG into a content company. BTW, it already pays AP to use its content in Google news.

GOOG is and will always be a software and server company, it does not want to be in the content business. Yahoo tried to be in the content business with mixed results…

By: johnkoetsier

johnkoetsier — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 00:22:54 +0000

I suspect this is one of those “hey let's try something different and see what happens” type of things.

Maybe it will work. Maybe it will fall flat.

Either way, Google will have learned something.

By: gregorylent

gregorylent — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 21:01:10 +0000

like a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down ..

trying anything to get advertising to remain palatable, or become palatable, depending on you pov

i think even google knows ads aren't sustainable long term, more space created than things to advertise

By: Czar

Czar — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:12:56 +0000

I've never heard of this deal before between Google and that certain cartoonist. This is weird. Google's acting strange recently. What does it try to tell? Are they changing a new business scheme?