Better question: What isn’t Google doing?
Admittedly I have not read Jeff Jarvis’ book, “What Would Google Do?” and I probably should because it’s supposed to have a lot of great insight to the Web and business and invention.
Nonetheless, I think a more important question is, what isn’t Google doing? and what is Google doing? Framed in the context of journalism’s future, this is pretty important question.
Google is creating a road map to the Internet via the Web. This is important because, “if Google can’t find your site, does it really exist?” Practically, yes. Metaphysically, no. That is, if you ignore Google, your site will not receive visits and you won’t make money in whatever form you’re attempting to make money with.
In the micropayments conversation this is important. Firewalls block Google news which causes sites to lose readers and lose revenue. If you use micropayment software, people say you will lose Google all together. I believe is wrong, I’ll explain below.
Google operates, at this point in time, as if the Web is the be-all-end-all of communication. If the Web disappeared Google would die. Consider this more carefully. Google’s entire operation is Web based. News, however, is cross-platform: TV, radio, Web, paper. If the Web died, news would survive.
That’s an important distinction. Google is not inventing new forms of communications, they are innovating current forms of communication. But sadly, news is neither inventing nor innovating.
Perhaps then, news should be inventing new forms of communication. But whatever that new form takes, it most include Google. Google is the primary index of all information – right now. Google makes it hard to leave the Web as a platform.
But if you have a piece of software (“think outside the browser”), then your software must be able to integrated inside and outside the Web. Parts of it, at least for the next few years, must be cross-platform in order to take advantage of the Web.
News companies should also streamline their Web sites into something smaller that allows Google to index stories. No firewall, just basic index information the way Digg indexes stories. But when people want to read the stories, they are pushed over to their news reader software where they pay for it.
Google is definitely NOT doing that.