Monday, April 13, 2009

"Google is a middleman made of software"

Nick Carr writes:

1. Google is a middleman made of software. It’s a very, very large middleman made of software. Think of what Goliath or the Cyclops or Godzilla would look like if they were made of software. That’s Google.

2. The middleman acts in the middleman’s interest.

3. The broader the span of the middleman’s control over the exchanges that take place in a market, the greater the middleman’s power and the lesser the power of the suppliers.

(Nick Carr goes on to focus on the issue of Google News and traditional newspapers, though it’s worth mentioning that newspapers too often act as middlemen between a) syndicated content from sources like AP, and the reader, or b) content coming from a field journalist, and the reader. It may at least be imaginable that there were other parties in or types of payment the middle of this.)

[Thanks SocialStream!]

"Google is a middleman ma ... by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (5+5)

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