Dinosaurs And Spaceships

Couldn't help but notice the curious justoposition of these two headlines in my daily Media Bistro feed:

Google Profits Surge 92% (LAT)
Google Inc. said that its third-quarter profit nearly doubled as the Internet powerhouse continued to rack up gains in the online search market at home and overseas. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company reported net income of $733.4 million, or $2.36 a share, for the three months ended Sept. 30, up 92 percent from $381.2 million, or $1.32, in the third quarter of 2005. NYP: "Business is very, very good at Google," says chief executive Eric Schmidt.

Explaining Disappointing Revenues, Two Newspaper Companies Point to the Same Culprit (NYT)
Newspaper companies continued to show weakness yesterday, with The New York Times Co. and Tribune both reporting lackluster earnings, citing soft advertising sales as a major culprit. At Times Co., the slowdown "is expected to continue through the end of the year," said president Janet L. Robinson. NYP: Shares have lost 15 percent of their value this year as pressure mounted on chief Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger to plug a drain of newspaper ad dollars being steadily siphoned away by the Internet.

Besides the obvious dinosaur-vs-spaceman images this calls up, there's a very fundamental difference: The newspapers' business model is based on creating a vehicle for advertising, then selling it to the people. Google's is based on creating a vehicle for people, then selling it to advertisers.

People, myself included, laughed at the early dot-com's frenzied rewarding of companies that got hits instead of bucks, but clearly, after the dot-dust settled, the laugh was on us.

For the record, I'm still using Ask.com as my preferred search engine because of Google's investments in leftist causes. Sadly, for the record, Google is a much better product.

Related Tags: MSM, Media, Google