Google’s new Fast Flip intrigues me — I’d like to see it develop into a replacement for my RSS feed reader, and I think it might. Presumably Google’s Marissa Mayer is thinking of Fast Flip when she says this:
The atomic unit of consumption for existing media is almost always disrupted by emerging media. For example, digital music caused consumers to think about their purchases as individual songs rather than as full albums. Digital and on-demand video has caused people to view variable-length clips when it is convenient for them, rather than fixed-length programs on a fixed broadcast schedule. Similarly, the structure of the Web has caused the atomic unit of consumption for news to migrate from the full newspaper to the individual article. As with music and video, many people still consume physical newspapers in their original full-length format. But with online news, a reader is much more likely to arrive at a single article. While these individual articles could be accessed from a newspaper’s homepage, readers often click directly to a particular article via a search engine or another Website.
Presumably this is the future of journalism as Google sees it. And Google will have a big say in the future of journalism, whether we like it or not.
Text Patterns
September 15, 2009
Instead of 1,000 newspapers, we have one Google. An exaggeration, of course, but I'm sure you get my point.
Or maybe I haven't made my point.
The above quote demonstrates that Google continues to present itself as, and perhaps even think of itself as an unbiased intermediary. Obviously it isn't.
You've made the point, Tony, and it's a good one. Google wants to say that it's just an intermediary. But if it's the only one . . . .
Did I ever show you the nifty little tricks in Google's autofill, Alan?