John Battelle - You can find in the moment coverage of the news here. What I found fascinating about this - not just the data, but the chance to really think about universal search - is the age-old conflict that Google faces between being a pure navigation service - "We get you where you want to go" - and being a media company - "We get you to our properties, where we make more money if you stay."
This conflict is very real, urgent, and present.
To pretend otherwise is to ignore the reality of YouTube, Google News, Google Maps, Google Local, the onebox interface, Knol, and everything else Google owns that represent the chance for them to make money the way every other media company in the world makes money - by competing for your attention and monetizing it with advertising. (I’ve been on about this for some time).
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This conflict is very real, urgent, and present.
To pretend otherwise is to ignore the reality of YouTube, Google News, Google Maps, Google Local, the onebox interface, Knol, and everything else Google owns that represent the chance for them to make money the way every other media company in the world makes money - by competing for your attention and monetizing it with advertising. (I’ve been on about this for some time).
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This is a crucially important observation made in this article. And here’s one implication: universal search makes it harder for smaller businesses and smaller sites to be found in Google. Because not only are you competing against bigger companies, but you are now competing against Google, too, which is pitching its own properties at searchers.
Google is practically managing a business fairy tale right now. I wonder how long they’ll be able to do it before the wing of their plane clips the ground.