As Google Goes, So Goes the Nation

Ramblings

from the quite-a-debate dept

I’ve been debating whether or not this story was worth posting here. The NY Times has a short opinion piece weighing in on the recent debate over whether or not blogs have “too much power” in Google, which is something of a ridiculous debate when you really get to thinking about it. If Google isn’t doing their job, and not providing people with what they want, then it just opens up an opportunity for someone else to provide a better search. Seems pretty straightforward to me. However, the more interesting part of this story are the responses to the NY Times article from folks like Doc Searls and Dave Winer, making a really good point: the popular press seems to be complaining that blogs are outweighing their own stories on certain topics. A large part of the problem, though, is the short-sighted view of the publishers of these press websites that hide their archives behind tollbooths. The simple fact: “If you want to be in Google, you gotta be on the Web.” Indeed. It’s certainly up to those sites and their management over whether or not to open themselves up – but (like so many businesses these days) they seem to be going for short-term direct revenue, rather than realizing the long-term potential for (much greater) indirect revenue by opening up their archives.