Intellectual Property Law

The GoogleWeb

By Greg Lastowka

I don’t like to pick on journalists for not being perfect, but I’m constantly surprised at how reporters seem willing to give Google credit for the resources available on the Web. About two years ago, USA Today ran an article entitled “This the Google side of your brain” where the reporter suggested that Google is

the key to a huge repository of trivia, the kind that once rattled around in the back of our minds. Call it our auxiliary brain.

Obviously, the play here is that Google = your extra brain, a vast repository of information. But reading the above words a little more closely, what the reporter is technically saying is that Google is the key to that repository of brain-like trivia, which is more accurate. Google has provided an index to make the repository more useful, but it did not create the repository.

This distinction is important for reporters to bear in mind, especially given the immense and justifiable goodwill that people have toward the Web, and that often seems to be translated into similar feelings of goodwill toward Google. See, e.g., this gushing review of the Googleplex, and query how much of the praise would apply if Google were a company a fraction as wealthy producing–I don’t know–stuffed dogs.

But, actually, I think the line between Google and the Web is blurring a bit more these days.

As I explain in more detail this article, the AdSense era makes the conflation of Google with the Web a little more real. When Google began offering a broad base of small-scale website owners the ability to easily display and obtain revenues from contextual ads, this essentially meant that Google was buying up real estate in the broader Web. The amateur and professional content that Google used to index is now increasingly partnered with Google in business relationships. So Google is, increasingly, a part of the Web.

There are some interesting implications from this. A couple years ago, I observed in an article (Digitial Attribution) that much of the creativity on the Web seems to be fueled by reputation economics. In the recent past, people have created content on the Web in large part because they desired social recognition for the value of their unique contributions.

I think that’s still true, in the main, today. But consider an article from October of last year, where USA Today wrote about how “Gray Googlers” strike gold. The article starts with:

Jerry Alonzy figured he’d be working into his 70s at least.

As an independent handyman at the mercy of weather patterns near Hartford, Conn., he’d always made a decent income that rarely grew.

Then he found Google (GOOG), and his life changed. Alonzy, 57, now makes $120,000 a year from the ads Google places on his Natural Handyman website, and he couldn’t be more thrilled.

Good for Jerry, of course. And good for Google, of course, which also made (probably–no one seems to knows for sure) $40,000 (???) or so off this particular partnership.

But what I find interesting about the Gray Googlers article is how, in addition to telling stories about business success, it also features some celebration of new potentials for collaborative community and amateur passions. See, e.g., this bit:

“When you retire, you have to have some interests,” says Needham. “This is my indoor activity. I did a search online for how to create a website and found lots of good help out there for nothing.”

The Internet, he says, opened up a new world for him.

“I started searching for other sites about bees and met some people from Australia with similar interests. We’ve since become friends, and I went to Australia last year to visit.”

That’s a pretty old story about the Web connecting distant people with similar interests. But the Grey Googlers piece tacks on the new dimension of how advertising revenues are becoming, for many of these “retired” amateur hobbyist communities, a large part of the driving force behind Web creativity.

At $250 a month, Needham’s site generates revenue in line with its niche audience of folks who want to learn about bees.

“I bring in enough to fund a free vacation to Key West every year for the family,” says Needham, a retired Department of Defense employee.

Note that these folks are now being identified by the journalist as “Gray Googlers” rather than “Gray Web authors.” It seems their interest in and dependence on the revenues they obtain from Google are what now defines them as a creative group. Micro-payments may have failed to make the amateur Web a more traditional commercial marketplace, but micro-advertisements seem to be making inroads.

So here’s a slightly related question: could Google make the Web even more commercial? If you were Google, holding the key to the Web as USA Today says it does, wouldn’t it possibly be in your interest to give your many AdSense partners like Alonzy and Needham–who effectively send money your way when you send search traffic their way–a higher rank in your search results?

We don’t know what Google puts into its ranking formula, but as far as I can tell, Google doesn’t do this.  Would we be better off (or no worse off) if Google did do this?

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Full post as published by Madisonian.net on February 29, 2008 (boomark / email).