Google News is a Joke: LA Times is NOT Laughing
Google News is a joke: Shelby Bonnie, former CNET CEO, suggested as much at the NYC MIXX conference last year. With a nod to fellow panelist Tim Armstrong, Google VP Ad Sales, Bonnie underscored the uselessness of listing dozens of versions of the “same AP story,” as Google News does.
Algorithmic filtering and machine ranking can not subsititute for editorial judgement in identifying and prioritizing content, Bonnie indicated. Moreover, seeing the handful of stories that “people are actually doing the work on” ought to be the norm, Bonnie asserted.
Can Google News get its editorial act together? The Los Angeles Times does not believe so, headling an editorial on Google News: “It’s not journalism.”
Does the USC Annenberg Online Journalism Review want the LA Times to shut up about Google?
Should the Times apologize to Google for pointing out that “journalism is more than just aggregating information”? The blogosphere undoubetdly thinks so.
After all, Dave Winer admonished Jason Calacanis that HE should apologize to Google for pointing out that Google SERPs are not pristine. Winer even scripted a handy mea culpa for Calacanis to submit to Google:
To our friends at Google. I’d like to apologize for saying that your search engine is filled with spam.
“Our friends” at Google? The shrewd, secretive $160 billion market cap Google with a determined manifest destiny to obtain, control and house all the public, private and personal data in the world, belonging to every man, woman and organization on the planet, in its “massively, scalable infrastrucure” in the cloud? THOSE Google “friends”?
Why is the Web’s monopolist acting powerhouse welcomed as a personal friend, while desktop monopolizing Microsoft is reviled as a direct enemy? Because Google is seen as a new age Santa Clause, a beneficent SERP fountain of the almighty “flow” and a turnkey AdSense monetization spigot.
Google “friendship” is a dangerous illusion, though. From dreams of “free, organic” traffic to calculations of super sized AdWords and AdSense ROI, the Web’s Google dependency fuels a ballooning GOOG while robbing Web publishers of their independent, stand alone economic futures.
The L.A. Times actually case in point. For all their independent who needs Google “sound and fury,” Times’ journalists are very conventionally Google dependendent as well.
ALSO: Does USC Annenberg OJR Want Old Media Journalists to Shut Up?
The Web’s fuel–Ads by Google–is funding the L.A. Times “It’s not journalism” opinion.
PLUS: Google Office Ignores Sun StarOffice: Microsoft Killer Still MIA and Google vs. Facebook, the Next Big Battle