New book on Google reviewed at Bloomberg

[CEJ]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=aJ9VG8HfSeIo

Excerpt of the bloomberg.com article that gets to the heart of the
matter about what Google is and how it is able to make money. However,
I would also point out that Google is its own stock bubble right now,
which makes the top of the company flush with cash. The day the
company has to pay a dividend is the day you know the bubble is over.

>>Internet Advertising

The IPO also marked the moment when content producers learned how much
money the upstart was making at their expense.

“The evidence was now visible that Google was attracting more Internet
advertising than anyone else, and these dollars were being siphoned
from traditional media,” we read.

Auletta makes the case that Google’s clashes with media companies and
advocates of privacy protection often reflect the mindset of its
engineers: “They naively believe that most mysteries, including the
mysteries of human behavior, are unlocked with data,” he says.

Many media executives quoted here question that. One is Tom Curley,
chief executive officer of the Associated Press, which claimed Google
was commoditizing AP content and demanded a license agreement, Auletta
says.

“No, there is nothing naive about these guys,” Curley tells Auletta.
“They are taking everybody else’s work and they are figuring out how
to do a deal with most other people in which heads, they win, and
tails, most everyone else loses.”

Early Warning

Yet “old media” can’t blame Google alone for the digital devastation,
Auletta reminds us. Craig Newmark, for one, didn’t set out to swamp
newspapers when he started craigslist.org, a site where people post
job openings, apartments for rent, goods for sale and more. Only later
was it clear how this ate into newspapers’ classified sections, which
generated about a third of their advertising revenue, Auletta
says.<<end of excerpt