Googled Part 11

No cable or satellite or telephone system will pay a hefty price for a network series that appears for free on YouTube-or is available in a pirated version. Because Viacom took the extreme (and arguably foolish) position of suing them, Google and YouTube have made considerable progress in coming up with a better (if probably still porous) defense against piracy. And as Google acknowledged in the negotiations-and in its settlements with the AP and the book publis.h.i.+ng industry-it has accepted the principle of paying for content. Whether piracy safeguards or deals with YouTube can spare traditional television from further slippage is doubtful. Ultimately, the fate of traditional media is to jump off a bridge without knowing whether there is a net below.

The Hollywood studios have their own concerns about piracy. The biggest box office movie of 2008, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight, was illegally downloaded around the world more than seven million times, according to the New was illegally downloaded around the world more than seven million times, according to the New York Times. York Times. The Motion Picture a.s.sociation of America claims that illegal downloads and streaming of movies in 2008 accounted for 40 percent of the industry's revenue loss due to piracy. The audience for illegal downloads of The Motion Picture a.s.sociation of America claims that illegal downloads and streaming of movies in 2008 accounted for 40 percent of the industry's revenue loss due to piracy. The audience for illegal downloads of Heroes, Heroes, a studio-produced NBC series, was equal to one-quarter of the ten million viewers who watch it each week on NBC. In their efforts to stamp out piracy, the studios often offend their customers. Sergey Brin described going on a boat in Europe on his honeymoon and watching a DVD he and his wife had purchased. "We didn't finish. So we took it with us, and of course it wouldn't work in other DVD players." The more he talked, the more exercised he got. He recalled the time he purchased a studio-produced NBC series, was equal to one-quarter of the ten million viewers who watch it each week on NBC. In their efforts to stamp out piracy, the studios often offend their customers. Sergey Brin described going on a boat in Europe on his honeymoon and watching a DVD he and his wife had purchased. "We didn't finish. So we took it with us, and of course it wouldn't work in other DVD players." The more he talked, the more exercised he got. He recalled the time he purchased The Transformers, The Transformers, hoping to watch this science fiction movie in high definition on his new Blu-ray player. But his copy wasn't compatible with Blu-ray. "For a variety of reasons and some kind of piracy paranoia, they make it really hard on you.... I kind of feel the studios get in their own way." hoping to watch this science fiction movie in high definition on his new Blu-ray player. But his copy wasn't compatible with Blu-ray. "For a variety of reasons and some kind of piracy paranoia, they make it really hard on you.... I kind of feel the studios get in their own way."

Squaring the piracy concerns of studio executives with customers' urge for convenience has thus far eluded a solution. The movie business may be glamorous, but the profit margins are tight. For decades, selling movies to television proved to be richly rewarding, as did VCR and then DVD sales and rentals. Now the revenues from all of these are declining. Downloading movies over the Internet could be the next profitable platform-if piracy can be solved, and if the Hollywood studios were not immobilized by fear of offending big retailers, such as Wal-Mart, which sells their DVDs, and instead partnered to sell their own movies directly.

The cable business is more robust. Unlike broadcasters, cable programming chanels like ESPN or MTV that produce content are not dependent on ma.s.s audiences because they enjoy two revenue streams, advertising and license fees from cable systems. Cable system owners like Comcast or Time Warner that own the cable wire and distribute content over cable systems also derive revenue streams from both ads and monthly service charges. Digital cable also has this advantage over broadcasting: it is able to offer interactive features like video on demand. Cable networks and online advertising are the only two of the seven media groupings projected to gain ad revenues in 2009, according to media consultant Jack Myers. However, like broadcasters, cable systems are dogged by the proliferation of platforms-YouTube, Mys.p.a.ce, CNET, Verizon's FIOS, local stations, two satellite television providers-that weaken their power as gatekeepers.

By 2009, with cable networks and broadcasters distributing programs for free to various online platforms, giant cable system owners like Comcast and Time Warner were concerned that their programming was being devalued. So they initiated efforts to offer online access to all of their programs, but only to their cable subscribers. The hope was that if cable subscribers could summon any program they wanted when they wanted it, they'd have less reason to fret about YouTube or Hulu, and might lure new cable subscribers. Currently, cable system owners pay much of the thirty billion dollars in license fees collected annually by the cable networks that produce programs. The club cable system owners wielded to prevent the ESPNs from putting their programs online was a warning that they would not continue to pay these steep license fees for programs cable channels were giving away cheaply or for free.

But the cable programmers may hold their own club in the form of new technologies that could replace cable set-top boxes with wirelessly received signals that will allow users to integrate all devices-from streaming video to computers to TV sets to portable devices. In early 2009, Eric Schmidt saw a demonstration of one such sleek wireless box made by the Sezmi Corporation and came away thinking that this new technology posed an imminent danger to both cable and satellite TV systems. If the wireless system worked, the cable or statellite wire could become a superfluous middleman. Sezmi was planning to beta test its system that year and claims that it had already negotiated deals with cable and broadcast networks. TV manufacturers like Sony and Samsung are developing sets with Internet connections, allowing them to bypa.s.s the cable gatekeeper.

The cable system owners already lacked leverage over broadcast networks because they do not pay to air the programs of CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox, all of which were pus.h.i.+ng their own online strategies. If people could watch 24 on Hulu, its value to cable would be diminished. By placing their programs on a variety of online outlets-Hulu, TY.com, YouTube, Boxee-broadcasters also ran the risk of sabotaging their business. But if they didn't, they ran the risk of pa.s.sively watching their business erode. Again, the Innovator's Dilemma. Innovator's Dilemma.

A major challenge confronting the cable and telephone and other distribution companies is to demonstrate that they are not just a pipe that others use to transport their valuable content for a bargain price. Verizon's Seidenberg wants to position the phone company as a disrupter. "We can go directly to Procter and Gamble and they can reach you without having to go through Google. So the world will now move in a direction where distribution will have a more important role." Verizon was experimenting in late 2008 by distributing Prince's music "directly to customers without going through a middleman": the music companies. "We can talk directly to directors and creators of content."

Seidenberg, who began his career as a telephone lineman, was seated in a corner booth at the Regency Hotel, which is a New York power breakfast spot, and he grew bl.u.s.tery as he talked of what Verizon could do to middlemen. "We're going to change ten percent of every relations.h.i.+p. In some cases, fifty percent. So will there be a need for media buyers? Maybe one!" He laughed. Because Verizon will own a wealth of data, he envisioned working directly with advertisers to better target customers. The telephone companies have a technology known as deep packet inspection (DPI) that both protects their pipes from security threats and exposes the web browsing activities of consumers to the kind of controversial behavioral advertising practiced by Phorm in England.

"It could be the broadcast networks" that Verizon siphons ad dollars from, Seidenberg said. "It could be the cable networks. It could be a lot of people." Seidenberg's words, however, b.u.mp against reality. Having existed for so long as quasimonopolies, the phone companies and cable companies may not be agile and daring enough to move with the speed required. It sounds hubristic for Seidenberg to a.s.sume, for instance, that a company like Verizon, with minimal experience working with Hollywood directors or advertisers, could overnight develop the skills to work with actors and directors, or with Procter & Gamble. And Seidenberg blithely minimizes the volatile issue of privacy.

Irwin Gotlieb also dismisses anxiety about privacy. He is more focused on the ability of digital technology to generate more data, which will mean that "the value of data will escalate dramatically." The critical questions to Gotlieb will be: "Who collects the data? Who owns the data? Who gets to exploit the data? Who's the gatekeeper? Who's the toll collector? These are key strategic issues that need to be resolved"-between the ad agencies and Google and the cable and telephone companies, among others. But the data will be crucial because it will allow advertisers to move from guessing about "multiple correlations"-income, demographics, television programs watched-to "intent," which he described this way: "Today, if I decide I need to sell a high-end watch, who's the prospect? I can identify people with discretionary income. I can identify males or females fifty or older. But down the road, I will know you're a watch collector because I will have that data on you. How? I will know your purchase behavior. A lot of retailers have loyalty programs, and they will share this information. If consumers have searched on Google or eBay to look at watches, all these searches are data trails. So instead of a.s.suming that because you're wealthy you might buy a watch, I can narrow my target to the small percentage of watch collectors." And mobile phones offer still more data. Whether the mining of this data will provoke a public outcry is an issue Gotlieb does not stress.

To make the sale, he believes awareness, or brand advertising, will remain vital. He has a stake in saying this, but he seems to believe it: "I am not a proponent of the belief that most advertising is wasted. If I don't create a predilection in you for a Mercedes when you're a fifteen-year-old male, you're not going to buy a Mercedes when you're forty and can afford to. Take disposable diapers. Should you just market to pregnant women? I would argue that maybe the grandmother has significant influence. And maybe you could make little diapers for Barbies, so the eight-year-old girl becomes aware of your brand. Both of these require you to substantially expand your target." And expand the money clients spend on advertising. It also a.s.sumes that the public will accept such hard sells.

Gotlieb believes only the agencies possess the skills and experience to engage in such long-term brand building. He refers to his work not as media buying but as "media investment management." Whatever name he chooses, it's endangered, which Gotlieb reluctantly admits. "I'm terribly concerned about getting disintermediated." It's why he thinks his business has to change from middleman to a princ.i.p.al. "I've grown up in a business where the media agency was a pure service business. I was taught from day one to put my clients' interests ahead of my own. It may have been appropriate for the time and place. But it is no longer appropriate today, because we're competing with people who are both vendor and client, as well as agent. Microsoft is a vendor, but owns a digital ad agency. Google is a vendor, but deals directly with clients. As a consequence, unless you're terribly naive, we have to morph our business from pure service to a mix of service and nonservice." He ticked off several options, including producing and owning content, whether it be television programs or movies; investing in technologies, as his parent company has, to try to capture more data and receive not just fees and commissions but "partic.i.p.ate in the profits."

What if a client asks whose interests come first, Gotlieb's or the clients? "That's a really good question," he responded. "But how many people ask Google that question? If we remain purely a service business, we won't be in business."

Advertising will look very different in coming years. New digital middlemen have already surfaced. Like Google's AdSense, these advertising networks act as brokers, putting Web sites and advertisers together. Computerized ad networks can quickly cobble together Web sites or TV stations that, together, reach an audience the size of an ESPN but at a fraction of the cost. This is a threat not just to traditional media, but to middlemen like Gotlieb. Still another refinement among agencies like Gotlieb's is that, increasingly, the media buyers are beginning to offer to create ads as well. Because the giant media-buying firms operate under the same corporate umbrella as the creative agencies, this could produce civil war within firms.

Gotlieb knows that if he doesn't refine his business model, Google or someone else may grab his clients. Most media (and not a few other industries) are in a race to avoid becoming superfluous middlemen. No matter how much popcorn they sell, movie theaters might face this fate when Hollywood begins to release movie DVDs simultaneously with the theatrical release. It is the danger faced by local TV stations as broadcast networks air their programs online and threaten to sell them directly to cable, and by media buyers like Gotlieb as clients work directly with Google or perhaps Verizon. The Internet and digital technology allows people to download movies rather than buy a DVD, to bypa.s.s stores and travel agents and perhaps eliminate financial or real estate brokers, publishers, bookstores, agents, music CDs, newspapers, cable or telephone wires, paid cla.s.sifieds, packaged software and games, car salesmen, the post office. The Web allows sellers and buyers to connect directly, as they have done on eBay. Inevitably, new technologies will cripple many old media businesses.

One day when I was questioning Eric Schmidt about the travails of old media, he calmly asked, "Do you feel bad that the pager business is in trouble? No, because you use your cell phone as a subst.i.tute. When you have a good subst.i.tute, it's very, very hard to fight against that." Unless old media companies want to fight their customers, try to deny their desire for new choices and new conveniences, they have no alternative but to figure out how to ride the wave.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

Where Is the Wave Taking Google?

Google is surfing a huge wave that seems not to have crested. Eileen Naughton is the director of media platforms for Google and works out of its block-long New York office on West Fifteenth Street. Before joining Google, Naughton spent more than fifteen years at Time Warner, where she held a number of senior positions, including president of Time Time magazine and vice president of investor relations during the merger of AOL and Time Warner, when everyone feared layoffs, turf battles, a stock price drop, and senior management at the joined companies vied to mirror the Ottoman Empire, where the wives of sultans poisoned stepsons. When asked to describe the difference between working at Google and at an old media company, Naughton offered a one-word reply: "Optimism." magazine and vice president of investor relations during the merger of AOL and Time Warner, when everyone feared layoffs, turf battles, a stock price drop, and senior management at the joined companies vied to mirror the Ottoman Empire, where the wives of sultans poisoned stepsons. When asked to describe the difference between working at Google and at an old media company, Naughton offered a one-word reply: "Optimism."

Google may not have an overarching strategy, but it does aim to be a disrupter. Google has always been guided by a vision enunciated as early as 2002, as we've also seen, when Larry Page told a Stanford cla.s.s, "If you can solve search, that means you can answer any question. Which means you can do basically anything."

When Google defines its informational mission so broadly, and enters businesses where engineering can eradicate inefficiencies, it is left with a shooting gallery of swollen targets. An "innovative" company like Google, said Brin, enters fields where "we scale," meaning where they have the infrastructure to enter fairly cheaply and without huge diversions of resources. With millions of computers and servers processing searches and collecting and digesting data, this architecture makes it possible for Google to "scale" into cloud computing, to store and search and sell digital books, to host the fifteen hours of video uploaded each minute on You Tube-the equivalent, Brin said, of uploading eighty-six thousand full length movies every week. "Everything Google does extends its reach," Bala Iyer and Thomas H. Davenport wrote in the Harvard Business Review. Harvard Business Review. "It is informational kudzu." And although Google likes to say they don't compete with media companies and prefers to call them "partners," Iyer and Davenport write that by working with advertisers and newspapers, magazines, television, radio, mobile telephones and Web sites, it "is quite possible that what Google learns across various media as it solves problems for the ecosystem partners may position it to become the compet.i.tor that it now claims not to be." "It is informational kudzu." And although Google likes to say they don't compete with media companies and prefers to call them "partners," Iyer and Davenport write that by working with advertisers and newspapers, magazines, television, radio, mobile telephones and Web sites, it "is quite possible that what Google learns across various media as it solves problems for the ecosystem partners may position it to become the compet.i.tor that it now claims not to be."

Google appears to be well positioned for the foreseeable future, but it is worth remembering that few companies maintain their dominance. At one point, few thought the Big Three auto companies would ever falter-or the three television networks or AT&T, IBM, or AOL. For companies with histories of serious missteps-Apple, IBM-it was difficult to imagine that they'd rebound, until they did. To avoid the roller coaster, Google has to avoid two sets of obstacles, one external, the other internal.

THE EXTERNAL HURDLES START with Microsoft, but they don't end there. Because Google has been so audacious, it has "waked up the bears," colliding with various industries and companies. Alert to Google's growing dominance, Verizon in late 2008 chose Microsoft's search engine for its mobile phones. Newspapers and magazines now want Google to pay to link to their stories. Television and movies seek license fees from YouTube. Telephone companies fear Google's Android. Advertising agencies seesaw back and forth between wariness and hostility. Cable and telephone broadband providers are angry about Google's call for an "open net." Rupert Murdoch is unhappy that Google is likely to end its lucrative advertising guarantee to his Mys.p.a.ce when the contract expires in 2010, as Time Warner was when Google announced in early 2009 that it would sell its 5 percent stake in AOL, cheapening the value of AOL and of Time Warner's stock. Microsoft needs no reminders that Google is their enemy and was reminded of this in July 2009 when Google announced-as Netscape, to Microsoft's chagrin and alarm, did a decade earlier-that it was retooling its browser to become an operating system for PCs, one without boot-up delays and that would be simpler and faster and cheaper than Windows. (Of course, Microsoft countered with a Web-based version of its Office software that is also free.) Overseas, Google is challenged. Its social network site, Orkut, has seen its market share slip in countries like India and Brazil, where it was once dominant. Even in search, there has been slippage; in Russia, a private start-up named Yandex has a market share approaching 50 percent, well ahead of Google. As with nations, there are few permanent allies. Friends like Apple are angry about Android, and although Jeff Bezos was an original Google investor (and declines to say if he still owns Google stock), Amazon is mounting a cloud-computing challenge as Google is mounting an electronic book challenge. "These companies air kiss each other, just as any Hollywood company does," observed Andrew Lack, the former president of NBC and the CEO of Sony Music, now the CEO of the multimedia division of Bloomberg LP. "So their level of sincerity is not much different than the traditional Hollywood. Usually we think of Hollywood and Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., as company towns. Ironically, Silicon Valley is often right there with them."

Google knows that one day its cold war with Facebook could turn hot. By March 2009, Facebook had 200 million users, double the number it had when Sheryl Sandberg joined a year earlier. Sandberg projected that by the end of the year, Facebook would have 1,200 employees. Despite sneers that Facebook makes no money, Sandberg said if her company extracted the money it reinvests in its computerized infrastructure, "we've been profitable for seven quarters." (Of course, one can't extract these core business expense.) By the fall of 2009, she predicted that Facebook would take in more cash than it expends. Asked whether Facebook was a threat, Bill Campbell replied without hesitating, "Anybody that gets a widely accepted user platform is to be worried about.They could be the start page for people that use the Web." The Google model is based on getting users out of Google and to other sites, on maintaining the Internet as the primary platform. Facebook and other social networks seek to keep users on their sites, to become the hub of their online lives, to become their home.

Social networks might pose a threat to Google search. At the MIT Media Lab in the winter of 2009, a Ph.D. student named Kwan Lee was devising a mobile phone application for a social network search function. Lee began with the premise that "Ads on the side are not useful to me." Google search, he said, "is a pull model," in which the search program aggregates data and lets users decide what is useful. Lee thinks it is difficult for users to "pull" the data they want from the hundreds of thousands of links received in response to a single search query, much of which he considers spam. As a subst.i.tute, he is devising a "push" model with which friends who are part of a social network could push tips to friends, sharing what they purchased. It would also allow partic.i.p.ants to ask questions of friends, who are likely to deliver more precise and trusted answers. "This makes search much more efficient," said Lee, fondling his iPhone in his s.p.a.ce on the fourth floor of the Lab. "My goal is to reduce and eliminate spam," to allow "people to get recommendations from friends."

This could pose a threat to Google, for although it has a broader base of data, social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Ning, or Linkedin retain more in-depth information about individuals and their community of friends. A familiar brand name like Amazon could also pose a challenge. "What happens if people searching for a product go right to Amazon and not to Google?" asked an important Google adviser.

Google's founders are acutely aware that search is still fairly primitive. Type into your Google search box "Was Shakespeare real?" and in less than a second up pop 5,06,000 results. Because many books have been written exploring whether someone other than William Shakespeare penned his plays, one result would not be possible or even desirable. But 5 million? Page and Brin often say that their ideal is to have so much information about their users that Google can devise an algorithm that provides a single perfect answer.

Kwan Lee is not alone in thinking that Google is mistaken to treat search as an engineering problem. John Borthwick, who created one of the first city Web sites, sold it to AOL in 1997, and later became senior vice president of technology and alliances for Time Warner, thinks Google "lacks a social gene." (Borthwick has since founded and now runs Betaworks, which seeds money for social media.) Information, he said, "needs a social context. You need to incorporate the social graph [the connections among people] into search. Twitter becomes a platform for search. People put out Tweets-'I'm thinking about buying a camera. What does anyone think of this camera?'" It's the wisdom of crowds-your crowd of friends. "Google is just focused on CPU-central processing computers-and ignores the processing of the human brain." He believes this makes its search vulnerable. Google obviously has come to share this concern for a senior Google executive confirms that they tried-and failed-to acquire Twitter.

Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan identifies another variation of this threat. "If I were Google I'd be worried about vertical searches," he said-searches that tap the knowledge of experts. Jason Calacanis, a Web entrepreneur, started a niche search engine, Danny Sullivan identifies another variation of this threat. "If I were Google I'd be worried about vertical searches," he said-searches that tap the knowledge of experts. Jason Calacanis, a Web entrepreneur, started a niche search engine, Mahalo.com. The problem with horizontal search, Calacanis said, is that it spews out too much information and a.s.sumes that the most linked sites are best. "The 'wisdom of crowds' is great to find trends," but there is such a "mob" of voices on the Web that search results produce too much useless information. He said he raised twenty million dollars to hire experts who produce targeted sets of no more than seven results-the seven best hotels in Paris, for instance. He hoped experts in various fields could produce answers to twenty-five thousand questions and computerize these. He vowed not to a.s.sign cookies to track a user's past searches, and said he'd be content in ten years if Mahalo had ten percent of all search traffic. He saw Google more as a partner than a compet.i.tor; the AdSense program generates a good deal of his site's income. The compet.i.tion he worried about is from old media. "I would have been afraid if the New York Times New York Times or Bloomberg took a bunch of editors to compete with us." Calacanis still can't understand why they didn't enter vertical search themselves. With experts in food, wine, movies, art, Iraq, finance-you name it-big newspapers might have been a search contender. or Bloomberg took a bunch of editors to compete with us." Calacanis still can't understand why they didn't enter vertical search themselves. With experts in food, wine, movies, art, Iraq, finance-you name it-big newspapers might have been a search contender.

Of course, Calacanis himself might not be a contender. Perhaps a challenge will come from Wolfram Alpha, which was launched in May 2009 and does not search the Web or rely on experts but instead relies on databases to provide answers and offers additional links on the side of the search results. Unlike Google, these vertical search engines do not offer a universal search, which raises this question: how does a user antic.i.p.ate which subjects are covered in the vertical search index? To date, with exceptions such as Expedia .com for travel, Monster.com for job searches, and for job searches, and HomeAway.com for vacation retreats, vertical searches have not thrived. And as Google moves toward better comprehension of the information users seek, it too will produce fewer and better-honed results. Google will have compet.i.tion from Microsoft's renamed and reengineered search engine, Bing, launched in May 2009, which in July 2009 finally succeeded in merging with Yahoo search. for vacation retreats, vertical searches have not thrived. And as Google moves toward better comprehension of the information users seek, it too will produce fewer and better-honed results. Google will have compet.i.tion from Microsoft's renamed and reengineered search engine, Bing, launched in May 2009, which in July 2009 finally succeeded in merging with Yahoo search.

One could argue that the ultimate vertical search would be provided by Artificial Intelligence (AI), computers that could infer what users actually sought. This has always been an obsession of Google's founders, and they have recruited engineers who specialize in AI. The term is sometimes used synonymously with another, "the semantic Web," which has long been championed by Tim Berners-Lee. This vision appears to be a long way from becoming real. Craig Silverstein, Google employee number 1, said a thinking machine is probably "hundreds of years away" Marc Andreessen suggests that it is a pipe dream. "We are no closer to a computer that thinks like a person than we were fifty years ago," he said.

Sometimes lost in the excitement over the wonders of ever more relevant search is the potential social cost. In his provocative book The Big Switch, The Big Switch, Nicholas Carr notes that Google's goal is to store 100 percent of each individual's data, what Google calls "transparent personalization." This would allow Google to "choose which information to show you," reducing inefficiencies. "A company run by mathematicians and engineers, Google seems oblivious to the possible social costs of transparent personalization," Carr wrote. "They impose h.o.m.ogeneity on the Internet's wild heterogeneity. As the tools and algorithms become more sophisticated and our online profiles more refined, the Internet will act increasingly as an incredibly sensitive feedback loop, constantly playing back to us, in amplified form, our existing preferences." We will narrow our frames of reference, become more polarized in our views, gravitate toward those whose opinions we share, and maybe be less willing to compromise because, he said, the narrow information we receive will magnify our differences, making it harder to reach agreement. Carr also expressed concern that search extracts another toll. "The common term 'surfing the Web' perfectly captures the essential superficiality of our relations.h.i.+p with the information we find in such great quant.i.ties on the Internet.... The most revolutionary consequence of the expansion of the Internet's power, scope, and usefulness may not be that computers will start to think like us but that we will come to think like computers. Our consciousness will thin out, flatten, as our minds are trained, link by link, to 'DO THIS with what you find HERE and go THERE with the result.' The artificial intelligence we're creating may turn out to be our own." Nicholas Carr notes that Google's goal is to store 100 percent of each individual's data, what Google calls "transparent personalization." This would allow Google to "choose which information to show you," reducing inefficiencies. "A company run by mathematicians and engineers, Google seems oblivious to the possible social costs of transparent personalization," Carr wrote. "They impose h.o.m.ogeneity on the Internet's wild heterogeneity. As the tools and algorithms become more sophisticated and our online profiles more refined, the Internet will act increasingly as an incredibly sensitive feedback loop, constantly playing back to us, in amplified form, our existing preferences." We will narrow our frames of reference, become more polarized in our views, gravitate toward those whose opinions we share, and maybe be less willing to compromise because, he said, the narrow information we receive will magnify our differences, making it harder to reach agreement. Carr also expressed concern that search extracts another toll. "The common term 'surfing the Web' perfectly captures the essential superficiality of our relations.h.i.+p with the information we find in such great quant.i.ties on the Internet.... The most revolutionary consequence of the expansion of the Internet's power, scope, and usefulness may not be that computers will start to think like us but that we will come to think like computers. Our consciousness will thin out, flatten, as our minds are trained, link by link, to 'DO THIS with what you find HERE and go THERE with the result.' The artificial intelligence we're creating may turn out to be our own."

The fear was that Google and its online brethren shortened attention spans and trivialized ideas by simplifying them. This was the thrust a quarter century ago of Neil Postman's influential book, Amusing Ourselves to Death. Amusing Ourselves to Death. He was writing of the public harm when television supplanted print. I can't suppress a smile when I think how this communications scholar, were he still alive, would react to the Internet, to the thousands and sometimes millions of answers Google offers to a search question, or to an online text-messaging tool like Twitter, with its insistence that no communication be more than 140 characters. He was writing of the public harm when television supplanted print. I can't suppress a smile when I think how this communications scholar, were he still alive, would react to the Internet, to the thousands and sometimes millions of answers Google offers to a search question, or to an online text-messaging tool like Twitter, with its insistence that no communication be more than 140 characters.

Increasingly, teachers admonish their students that a Google search can be too easy, allowing them to bypa.s.s books that broaden the context of their thinking and surprise them with ideas their search words don't antic.i.p.ate. Tara Brabazon, a professor of media studies at the University of Brighton, in England, published a book, The University of Google, The University of Google, that caught the attention of the press, in early 2008. Google, she told the that caught the attention of the press, in early 2008. Google, she told the Times Times of London the day before she was to deliver a lecture based on her work, "offers easy answers to difficult questions. But students do not know how to tell if they come from serious, refereed work or are merely composed of shallow ideas, superficial surfing and fleeting commitments." She does not let her first-year students use Google or Wikipedia as research tools because, she warned, "We need to teach our students the interpretive skills first before we teach them the technological skills." These social costs will matter to the company if they erode the trust Google has earned and if generations of college graduates and their instructors are dubious about Google's veracity or worth. of London the day before she was to deliver a lecture based on her work, "offers easy answers to difficult questions. But students do not know how to tell if they come from serious, refereed work or are merely composed of shallow ideas, superficial surfing and fleeting commitments." She does not let her first-year students use Google or Wikipedia as research tools because, she warned, "We need to teach our students the interpretive skills first before we teach them the technological skills." These social costs will matter to the company if they erode the trust Google has earned and if generations of college graduates and their instructors are dubious about Google's veracity or worth.

The other external threat to Google is government, a threat engineers have difficulty understanding; the Silicon Valley bubble can be as insular as the Beltway's. Google had fair warning when the Federal Trade Commission held up its DoubleClick acquisition, and when the Justice Department threatened ant.i.trust charges if Google did not relinquish its advertising deal with Yahoo. And these challenges were under the anti-regulatory administration of George W Bush. There is, with merit, a common belief at Google that the administration of Barack Obama and the Democratic leaders.h.i.+p in the House are more sympathetic to Valley companies and technology issues. Eric Schmidt was an important economic adviser to Obama, and other Google executives, like David Drummond, were early and fervent Obama supporters. But Google would forget at its peril that Democrats traditionally favor more regulation, not less; that Google has made some powerful frenemies that command attention in Was.h.i.+ngton; and that Google juggles nuclear issues-privacy, concentration of power, copyright-that could explode at any moment. In May 2009, the Obama administration's new ant.i.trust chief, Christine A. Varney, announced that her department would more rigorously police tech firms like Google.

There are court threats and festering opposition to Google's Book Search settlement. By the spring of 2009, the settlement was separating Google from members of "the tribe," as Lawrence Lessig dubs them, who treat openness as a cause and crusade against those who advance their own narrow commercial interests and choke compet.i.tion. The federal district court judge who must sign off on the agreement between Google and the publishers and the Authors Guild received amicus briefs from various groups asking him to address their ant.i.trust and monopoly concerns. Under the terms of the settlement, Google was granted nearly exclusive rights to millions of "orphaned" books, or those books still under copyright but whose copyright holders are unknown. Because only Google would be granted the right to digitize these books and to sell them, the judge was pet.i.tioned to prevent a Google monopoly Librarians expressed concern that Google would monitor reading habits and compile data. Some literary agents protested, as did Charles Nessen and a group of Harvard lawyers, that Google did not have the right to abrogate an orphaned copyright. And with Google effectively locking up the right to digitize all the books ever published, including orphaned books, the claim was that compet.i.tors would be shut out. Safeguards were required, they a.s.serted, to ensure that Google would not one day jack up the prices it charges universities and others. The federal judge gave opponents until October 2009 to register their complaints. Seeking to head off growing concerns among libraries, in May 2009 Google reached an agreement with the University of Michigan to grant libraries a say in pricing decisions and to settle disagreements by arbitration, a model it hoped to extend to other libraries. Ominously, the Justice Department also opened an ant.i.trust inquiry. Many who pet.i.tioned the court or lobbied Justice acknowledged that Google's effort to digitize books was salutary. Yet the din grew louder that Google was a mechanized steamroller.

And the U.S. government is not the only government Google must contend with. The European Union held up the DoubleClick merger, and may well object to Google's worldwide book deal that was made with American companies and authors. China censored their search engine and, in early 2009, blocked YouTube for a time from appearing before the world's largest Internet audience. As the Iranian government brutally suppressed street demonstrations in June 2009 not just with clubs but by jamming the Internet, the government of China had ordered PC makers to load filtering software on all machines sold after July 1. China claimed this would block p.o.r.nography, but it would also grant the government a weapon to block political content it considered subversive. Not surprising, many governments are hostile to the idea of a free and open Web that Google advances, believing their national values-or the governing regime-are threatened. I soured on attending the World Economic Forum in Davos several years ago because I found too many panels there to be insufferably polite and boring-designed to bestow backslaps on corporate and government attendees. But what is mind stretching about Davos, and different from most conferences, is that attendees come from all over the world and bring with them different sets of values and a.s.sumptions about the meaning of words. I remember a panel in the late nineties moderated by Esther Dyson, an early champion of the Internet. She opened by extolling the democratic values-freedom, liberty, access to all information-advanced by the Web. The former foreign minister of Denmark chimed in with his agreement, emphasizing that the Web gave individuals more freedom. He and Dyson thought they were taking the una.s.sailable moral high ground.

For the next several minutes, they sat slack-jawed as Singapore's amba.s.sador to the United States challenged them. He said his government licensed Internet use with the idea that the Web must serve society, not the individual. "By licensing you are asking for responsible use," he said. An Egyptian diplomat educated in America chimed his agreement. He favored regulating "human dignity" situations, such as expressions that might be construed as "racist." He urged the adoption of international standards to prevent freedom of speech from being too free.

Astonished, Dyson and the former foreign minister challenged these ideas as threats to "liberal values."

"I am not a liberal," a member of the Iranian Parliament shot back, declaring that his government opposed the "pollution" of Western democratic values spread over the Web. "A nonliberal system does not equal intolerance," he said, explaining that his country favored "community" over "individual" values.

This exchange was a reminder that "common values" are not always common, and that Google, whose mission is to share and make the world's information accessible, will always have government bears to contend with.

[image]

THE THREATS FROM WITHIN GOOGLE are as significant as those from without. "What Google should fear most of all is hubris," said Yossi Vardi, the Israeli entrepreneur who funds start-ups and is a friend of Page's and Brin's. "If you are successful and young and everything plays in your direction, you feel you can do anything." When Marissa Mayer said that Googlers love to battle over ideas but "everyone" shares "a similar motivation to do good for the world," or when chief cultural officer Stacy Savides Sullivan said, "What separates us is that our founders care about users, not making money," they sincerely meant it. But history is littered with examples of people who believed too much in their own virtue and lost the humility that is a counterweight to hubris. Page and Brin, observed Stanford's Terry Winograd, "are utopians," believing deeply that "if people have better information they will live better lives.... They are technological optimists in the sense of saying, 'Let's produce this technology and things will work out.'" They don't always work out, and some of the clashes Google has had-with book publishers and the AP, or with ad agencies and governments-resulted from an inability to hear.

In the 1990s a coterie of math whizzes that included n.o.bel Prize winners Robert C. Merton and Myron S. Scholes crafted formulas they were certain would allow Long-Term Capital Management to consistently out-perform the stock market; they failed spectacularly because their computer programs lacked common sense. This is the same mechanical thinking that often overlooks the needs of workers when designing a.s.sembly lines. In the same way, Google's engineers can get too wedded to their algorithms. As Google search has become more dominant, a chorus of complaints from media companies that the PageRank algorithm penalizes them has grown louder. By giving so much weight to the number of links a page received rather than the quality of the information reported, members of Google's Publisher's Advisory Council, which includes ESPN, the Wall Street Journal, Wall Street Journal, Hearst, and the Hearst, and the New York Times, New York Times, complained that their links often appeared on page three or lower in the search results. Nat Ives of complained that their links often appeared on page three or lower in the search results. Nat Ives of Advertising Age Advertising Age reported that the reported that the Times Times senior vice president, Martin Nisenholtz, told of doing a search for senior vice president, Martin Nisenholtz, told of doing a search for Gaza Gaza after the Israeli army launched an invasion to stop rocket attacks around New Year's 2009. "Google returned links," Ives reported, "to outdated BBC stories, Wikipedia entries, and even an anti-Semitic YouTube video well before coverage by the after the Israeli army launched an invasion to stop rocket attacks around New Year's 2009. "Google returned links," Ives reported, "to outdated BBC stories, Wikipedia entries, and even an anti-Semitic YouTube video well before coverage by the Times, Times, which had an experienced reporter covering the war from inside Gaza itself." While it's true that judging "quality" in news is subjective, it's also true that Google's proclaimed desire to offer the best information often conflicts with algorithms that reflexively push to the top of the search results those sites with the most links. If such complaints received wide currency, they would sabotage the trust essential to Google's continued success. which had an experienced reporter covering the war from inside Gaza itself." While it's true that judging "quality" in news is subjective, it's also true that Google's proclaimed desire to offer the best information often conflicts with algorithms that reflexively push to the top of the search results those sites with the most links. If such complaints received wide currency, they would sabotage the trust essential to Google's continued success.

Hubristically, Google engineers were convinced they could devise a system to successfully sell ads for YouTube. So far at least, they've failed. Why? They failed to comprehend the fear major advertisers have of placing their ads alongside potentially unfriendly user-generated content, and they failed to sufficiently antic.i.p.ate that users would find ads intrusive. In early 2008, when Eric Schmidt envisioned employing a Google sales force of a thousand to sell ads for radio, Danny Sullivan was dubious. "They have no experience," he said, echoing Mel Karmazin's comments from his 2003 visit. "They may be able to cut costs, but a lot of people at Google don't understand that selling other ads is not like a search auction. They don't understand it is an art, not a science." In late 2008 and early 2009, a somewhat humbled Google canceled its print ads and its audio ads programs, and pared two hundred sales and marketing jobs.

Frantically, Google adopted a new approach to YouTube. With the site then on course to lose about five hundred million dollars in 2009, Schmidt transferred Salar Kamangar, who had crafted Google's first business plan and shepherded AdWords, to YouTube headquarters to work closely with its founders to design a monetization plan. And the management team at Google recognized that to attract advertising, YouTube could not rely on user-generated videos or three-minute clips from the networks. They needed long-form content, and in April 2009 made ad-sharing deals with the Universal Music Group, the world's largest music company, to create a music video channel on YouTube, and with several Hollywood studios and CBS to air movies and a library of TV shows. More ads appeared when Google accepted that YouTube needed more professional content, and its losses were shrinking.

Size is a concern for a company with more than twenty thousand employees. Venture capitalist Fred Wilson, a princ.i.p.al in Union Square Ventures, unhesitantly believes Google "is a great company." But he also believes: "They are a big company Maybe they can't innovate anymore. It takes them meetings and processes to make decisions. Things don't get launched as quickly. They missed the whole video thing. YouTube beat them to it. They had to buy YouTube. They missed the whole social networking thing. Facebook beat them to that."

Losing focus is another danger for a company this large and wealthy. "My sense is that Google is like that fourteen-year-old who suddenly gets to wear grown-up clothing and maybe looks old enough to get a drink at a bar," said Strauss Zelnick, CEO of ZelnickMedia, which invests in and manages an array of media properties. "There's really nothing that doesn't look cool and interesting to a fourteen-year-old with an Amex card and no spending limit. Do you remember Michael Armstrong?" Zelnick recalled that Armstrong, the former CEO of AT&T, once boasted of spending a hundred billion dollars on acquisitions over four months. "I said, 'He's done.' No one does that well. Focus. Focus. Google has done a phenomenal job. Right now they can afford to, but at some point in time they are going to need to have a crisp vision of who they are and where they're going, and focus on that." Google has done a phenomenal job. Right now they can afford to, but at some point in time they are going to need to have a crisp vision of who they are and where they're going, and focus on that."

Although Mary Meeker believes Google is a great company, she offers another caution: the power and precariousness of a culture shaped by its founders. When founders stay involved in the enterprise-she cited Steve Jobs of Apple and Larry Ellison of Oracle-they often maintain the core values and mission of the business and bring something invaluable to the enterprise. But Jobs and Ellison lost focus, and watched their companies suffer. They also profoundly learned from their ordeals, while Page and Brin have yet to "experience nasty failure" and its concurrent ability to teach, as Al Gore also noted. And now with wives, and a son born to Brin in early 2009 and Page expecting his first child in the fall of 2009, and with incomprehensible wealth and two huge airplanes more conveniently at their disposal-Brin and Page persuaded NASA to waive its prohibition on private planes parking or using the nearby NASA facility-both young men are in the office less, jumping on their planes to take photographs in Africa, to explore the wilds of Alaska; Page likes to tool around in his Tesla electric car or fly his own helicopter and Brin to spend time building his own kite-powered sailboat. Will their attention wander from Google?

Today, Google appears impregnable. But a decade ago so did AOL, and so did the combination of AOL Time Warner. "There is nothing about their model that makes them invulnerable," Clayton Christensen, Harvard business historian and author of the seminal The Innovators Dilemma, The Innovators Dilemma, told me. "Think IBM. They had a 70 percent market share of mainframe computers. Then the government decided to challenge them. Then the PC emerged." Seemingly overnight, computing moved from mainframes to PCs. For a long while, Microsoft seemed unstoppable, he said, only to be diverted by government intervention and the emergence of Linux and open-source software. "Lots of companies are successful and are applauded by the financial community," Christensen said. "Then their stock price stalls because they are no longer surprising investors with their growth. So they strive to grow but forget the principles that made them great-getting into the market quickly, not throwing money at the wrong thing. When you have so much money you become so patient that you wait too long. Again, look at Microsoft. No one can fault them for not investing in growth ideas. But none of these have grown up to be the next Windows." Maybe, he added, we are now beginning to "see this at Google." The company has poured money into YouTube and Android and cloud computing and the Chrome browser, but has yet "to figure out the business model for each." told me. "Think IBM. They had a 70 percent market share of mainframe computers. Then the government decided to challenge them. Then the PC emerged." Seemingly overnight, computing moved from mainframes to PCs. For a long while, Microsoft seemed unstoppable, he said, only to be diverted by government intervention and the emergence of Linux and open-source software. "Lots of companies are successful and are applauded by the financial community," Christensen said. "Then their stock price stalls because they are no longer surprising investors with their growth. So they strive to grow but forget the principles that made them great-getting into the market quickly, not throwing money at the wrong thing. When you have so much money you become so patient that you wait too long. Again, look at Microsoft. No one can fault them for not investing in growth ideas. But none of these have grown up to be the next Windows." Maybe, he added, we are now beginning to "see this at Google." The company has poured money into YouTube and Android and cloud computing and the Chrome browser, but has yet "to figure out the business model for each."

Of course, these are the what-ifs. Today, and for the foreseeable future, few of Google's detractors would disagree with Fred Wilson, who said of Google, "There is no end in sight to the value they are creating." The value can be measured in rising profits and searches, but to quantify Google's success just in this fas.h.i.+on is to view the young company through a zoom lens rather than a wide-angle. The close-up misses how Google has transformed how we gather and use information, given us the equivalent of a personal digital a.s.sistant, made government and business and other inst.i.tutions more transparent, helped people connect, served as a model service provider and employer, made the complex simple, and become an exemplar of the oft-stated but rarely followed maxim, "Trust your customer." Because it is free, free, Google will be difficult to a.s.sail. Google will be difficult to a.s.sail.

No one can predict with certainty where Google and the digital wave is heading, when it will crest, or who it will flatten. If the public or its representatives come to believe Google plays favorites, aims to monopolize knowledge or its customers, invades their privacy, or arrogantly succ.u.mbs, in the words of Clayton Christensen, "to the falsehood that you can grow and grow because of network effects," then it will be more vulnerable. If Google maintains its deposit of public trust-continuing to put users first-and if it stays humble and moves with the swiftness of a fox, it will be difficult to catch.

Other companies have profoundly disrupted the business landscape. Think of the Ford automobile or the Intel chip. We can, however, be certain of this: Nowhere in the three billion daily searches it conducts, the two dozen or so tetabits (about twenty-four quadrillion bits) of data it stores, the more than twenty million books it plans to digitize, will we find another company that has swept so swiftly across the media horizon.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

This book was born two and one half years ago. I aspired to profile a company at the epicenter of the digital revolution, a company whose rise would also tell the story of how "new" media disrupted "old," and offer a glimpse into the future of media. Google was my chosen vehicle, but the company was reluctant to cooperate. Google's founders and many of its executives share a zeal to digitize books, but don't have much interest in reading them. They worried that cooperating on a book was an "inefficient" use of their time. I made the argument that my task was to understand and explain what they do and how they were changing the media world, and that they should look upon my project much as they look upon search. If my book was good, it would rise to the top of search results, becoming a common reference. After months of my kicking at the door, they opened it.

I could not have told this story without their cooperation. I made many weeklong visits to the Google campus in Mountain View, conducted a total of about 150 Google interviews, including 11 with CEO Eric Schmidt. I recorded each of these interviews; names and dates are contained in the endnotes. With the sole exception of one vice president, I interviewed everyone I asked to see, including Sergey Brin and Larry Page and Google directors, often more than once. With the blessing of his superiors, David Krane, who was one of Google's early hires, orchestrated and attended most interviews. He was a fountain of historical facts, and not once did he interrupt or intrude on an interview.

I was frequently asked by Google employees whether they would like this book. I always said that if I did my job there would be things that would displease them. No one at Google saw this book before publication. I am grateful to Google for its willingness to risk transparency. I am also grateful to about 150 individuals outside Google who granted interviews, many of them representatives of traditional media.

At Penguin Press, Ann G.o.doff has championed this project and been an irreplaceable partner on this as on previous books. Nick Trautwein lent his appreciable surgical skills to the editing of this book and stayed on top of everything. I am grateful to the rest of Ann's team, including her competent a.s.sistant, Lindsay Whalen; the marketing team a.s.sembled by Tracy Locke, especially the ever-industrious and cheerful Sarah Hutson; to copy editor Susan Johnson, who meticulously pored over every syllable; and to attorney Gary Mailman, who carefully vetted this book.

This book began at my journalistic home, The New Yorker, The New Yorker, which published my initial 2007 magazine piece, "The Search Party." Editor David Remnick bestows on his writers the luxury of time, a keen editorial eye, and a sense that he is in the managerial dugout cheering. The editorial support writers receive at which published my initial 2007 magazine piece, "The Search Party." Editor David Remnick bestows on his writers the luxury of time, a keen editorial eye, and a sense that he is in the managerial dugout cheering. The editorial support writers receive at The New Yorker, The New Yorker, from senior editors who read and comment on galleys to fact checkers who exhaustively exhume every sentence to copy editors who meticulously smooth prose-and from my longtime editor there, Jeffrey Frank-fills me with awe. from senior editors who read and comment on galleys to fact checkers who exhaustively exhume every sentence to copy editors who meticulously smooth prose-and from my longtime editor there, Jeffrey Frank-fills me with awe.

Lisa Chase gave a careful and close initial reading of the ma.n.u.script and reminded me what a gifted editor she is. Lawrence Lessig read the ma.n.u.script with the care he brings to legal briefs, and his comments were acute. Barry Harbaugh meticulously fact checked the ma.n.u.script. I wrestled for months to come up with a t.i.tle. It took my friend Nora Ephron about thirty seconds to cut through my mora.s.s and suggest, "Googled." Another old friend, Milton Glaser, who designed the jacket of my first book, volunteered to design this jacket, and did so overnight. Kenneth Lerer offered valuable advice, as did his business a.s.sociate, Jonah Peretti. I have received generous help from many other friends, including Tully Plesser, Susan Lyne, and John Eastman. My agent, Sloan Harris, has been a stalwart; you want him in your foxhole. Amanda Urban, as always, was my most demanding and provocative reader.

These are the folks who share credit; any blame is all mine.

NOTES.

Preface.

xi YouTube, with ninety million unique visitors: YouTube, with ninety million unique visitors: Nielsen VideoCensus, April 2009. Nielsen VideoCensus, April 2009.xi " "The Internet... makes information makes information accessible accessible": author interview with Hal Varian, April 1, 2009. author interview with Hal Varian, April 1, 2009.xii " "Our goal is to change the world": is to change the world": author one-on-one interview with Eric Schmidt at a forum sponsored by the author one-on-one interview with Eric Schmidt at a forum sponsored by the New Yorker New Yorker and the Newhouse School at Syracuse University June 11, 2008. and the Newhouse School at Syracuse University June 11, 2008.xiii Google Google could become could become a hundred-billion-dollar media company: a hundred-billion-dollar media company: author interview with Eric Schmidt, September 12, 2007. author interview with Eric Schmidt, September 12, 2007.

CHAPTER 1: Messing with the Magic.

3 With his suit and tie With his suit and tie: Karmazin Google meeting described in author interviews with Karmazin, May 13, 2008, and August 22, 2008; Nancy Peretsman, May 1, 2008; Eric Schmidt, April 16, 2008, and September 15, 2008; Sergey Brin, September 18, 2008; and Richard J. Bressler, September 26, 2008. Karmazin Google meeting described in author interviews with Karmazin, May 13, 2008, and August 22, 2008; Nancy Peretsman, May 1, 2008; Eric Schmidt, April 16, 2008, and September 15, 2008; Sergey Brin, September 18, 2008; and Richard J. Bressler, September 26, 2008.3 Short and pugnacious Short and pugnacious: Ken Auletta, "The Invisible Manager," Ken Auletta, "The Invisible Manager," The New Yorker, The New Yorker, July 27, 1998. July 27, 1998.4 Google's private books revealed Google's private books revealed: from August 2004 Google IPO registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission. from August 2004 Google IPO registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission.4 Karmazin's destination Karmazin's destination: description of 2400 Baysh.o.r.e Parkway offices from visit by author, April 18, 2008; author interviews with David Krane, April 18, 2008, and with Marissa Mayer, September 18, 2008; and from Google video of headquarters, provided by Google. description of 2400 Baysh.o.r.e Parkway offices from visit by author, April 18, 2008; author interviews with David Krane, April 18, 2008, and with Marissa Mayer, September 18, 2008; and from Google video of headquarters, provided by Google.6 25.2 billion Web pages 25.2 billion Web pages: WorldWideWebSize.com, February 2, 2009.7 It was Google's ambition It was Google's ambition: Schmidt and Page speech at Stanford on May 1, 2002, as seen on YouTube. Schmidt and Page speech at Stanford on May 1, 2002, as seen on YouTube.7 several hundred million daily searches several hundred million daily searches: Schmidt and Page speech at Stanford on May 1, 2002, as seen on YouTube. Schmidt and Page speech at Stanford on May 1, 2002, as seen on YouTube.7 the number of daily searches is now 3 billion: the number of daily searches is now 3 billion: internal Google doc.u.ments. internal Google doc.u.ments.7 "our "our business is highly measurable": business is highly measurable": author interview with Eric Schmidt, September 15, 2008. author interview with Eric Schmidt, September 15, 2008.8 $3 million spent: Advertising Age, million spent: Advertising Age, September 11, 2008. September 11, 2008.8 $172 billion spent in the United States on advertising, and the additional $227 billion spent in the United States on advertising, and the additional $227 billion spent on marketing: billion spent on marketing: Zenith OptimediaReport, April 2009. Zenith OptimediaReport, April 2009.9 Mayer ... remembered the meeting vividly: Mayer ... remembered the meeting vividly: author interview with Marissa Mayer, September 18, 2008. author interview with Marissa Mayer, September 18, 2008.9 "If Google makes": "If Google makes": author interview with Eric Schmidt, April 16, 2008. author interview with Eric Schmidt, April 16, 2008.9 "the long tail": "the long tail": Chris Anderson, the Chris Anderson, the Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More, Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More, Hyperion, 2006. Hyperion, 2006.10 " "aggregate content": content": author interview with Larry Page, March 25, 2008. author interview with Larry Page, March 25, 2008.10 from from a peak a peak daily newspaper circulation: daily newspaper circulation: Nicholas Carr, Big Nicholas Carr, Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google, Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google, Norton; and The Project for Excellence in Journalism, "State of the News Media Report," March 2007. Norton; and The Project for Excellence in Journalism, "Stat