Google aboard

When Google CEO Eric Schmidt speaks the world listens.
So here is the dawning of the inevitable, long-awaited new day:

In a 16 minute speech delivered at The Guardian's Activate 2010 summit, Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google since 2001, was asked what he thought of the future of newspapers: "What does the newsreading experience look like many years from now? . . . The most important thing is that it will be more personalised."

Except for the fact that the British spell personalised with an "s" and I spell it with a "z" we are, and have been for a long time, in complete agreement. If you agree register to come to the Personalize Media conference next year.

Read the complete story from the Guardian, which by the way is in a direct fight with Murdoch's Times of London, that not coincidentally today went totally behind a paywall. Black and white reactions to the web.

Headline: Google CEO: the future of newspapers is online - and mobile

Posted by Colin Heilbut on July 2, 2010 at 1:47 PM
In a 16 minute speech delivered at The Guardian's Activate 2010 summit, Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google since 2001, said that the experience of reading news will move to digital devices quite rapidly - and that it will involve personalized and local news which will be alert to your interests and existing knowledge. Among the numerous trends and shifts pointed about by Schmidt during his speech, one particularly relevant note for the newspaper industry was made in regards to mobile strategy. "Mobile is the hottest area of computer technology," Schmidt said. "The smartest developers now are writing apps for mobile before they write for Windows or Apple Mac desktop operating systems. Part of that is because these devices are hugely personal to us when we use them." Schmidt also addressed paywalls, News Corp. and the future of newspapers.
Asked what he thought of the future of newspapers, Schmidt said: "What does the newsreading experience look like many years from now? I think it's delivered to a digital device, which has text, obviously, but also colour, and video, and the ability to dig very deeply into what you are supplied with. At the moment we have readers, but it's not intelligent enough; newspapers often tell me what I already know. We'll have advertising products that are much more media-centric. The most important thing is that it will be more personalised."

When asked about paywalls, Schmidt refused to issue an outright condemnation. Rather, he said that "At Google we want to offer every publisher pieces for you to do with as you see fit," he said. "Murdoch's comment [Google is a "thief and a parasite" for its indexing operation of the Times site] was really about paywalls. There's a dispute in the [news] industry about subscriptions versus advertising. We want to enable both, and let users choose. But there are many publishers with large sites which have been offered the choice to go to a paywall, but don't, because they reckon they can make it work. Others want a subscription because that's the model they're used to."

But he said that newspapers faced real challenges because "they're replacing analogue dollars with digital cents, and a lot of people are losing their jobs as a result. It's much less bad here in Britain, perhaps because of the history of newspapers here, but in the US there are unhappy people who are losing audience at a faster and faster rate."

Instead, he said, organizations should build their strategies around the internet - and especially mobile. "The corollary of 'internet first' is 'mobile first'," he said. But he said that the improved targeting of news and information, possibly with more personalized services, "opens fundamental questions: news will become more personal, because we will be reading what we know we're interested in. But is that too narrow? How does serendipity occur? Does that personalization narrow our social view? If you follow the results of studies, it turns out that can lead to all sorts of biases. I don't know the answer, but to me this is a very fundamental question."

All things considered, Schmidt's intelligent commentary and analysis did not deliver any surprises nor hints about Google's news strategies or products. The emphasis on mobile technology should not come as a shock to anyone, but Schmidt did do an excellent job of arguing for exactly why resources need to be applied to mobile as the first priority, given the disproportionate adoption and growth rates for mobile devices and the close personal relationship consumers have with them.