August 28, 2006

Marissa Mayer, Google's v.p. of search products says the growing popularity of the Internet is as revolutionary as the invention of the printing press, but she quickly added that old media like television shouldn't be afraid of it.

In fact, Mayer told an audience at the Edinburgh International Television Festival that the Internet was actually TV's friend, not its rival.

"At Google, we're computer scientists," she said. "We're not brilliant storytellers or content creators" she added.

To be sure, many observers in the television industry fear the inexorable growth of Google, and of the the Internet in general, could spell the end of traditional media like television.

Overall, TV producers have observed with a sense of alarm at the meteoric rise of user-generated video. Various stunts, spoofs and many other video clips posted on sharing sites such as YouTube or Google Video can potentially attract millions of viewers - people who might otherwise be watching traditional television.

In the past few months, user-generated content has spread to television through stations like MTV Flux, which broadcasts viewer-selected and viewer-created video clips.

Marissa Mayer said that Google has failed to predict the huge popularity of user-generated content - its original model for online video emphasised "premium content" which viewers would pay a small fee to access. The success of YouTube over the past year - rapidly eclipsing Google Video in popularity - took many by surprise.

Mayer said the growth of Google and the Internet were both user-driven - and that's what makes them so revolutionary.

"There is a huge amount of user empowerment," Mayer said. "Like I said earlier, I think we are seeing something that is very much the equivalent of the printing press in our day and age." But she said that did not mean the end of traditional storytelling and information-sharing through television. Mayer said that Google actually sees the two media as complementary to each other.

"I don't think what is happening online will replace what is happening offline," she said. "I think both the offline and the online media will continue to have very successful, rich user experiences for some time.

"As a whole, I think the experience of using a television and using the Internet are so different". "There are social reasons that will cause both mediums to survive." Both, she said, had a common interest in finding ways to convert the popularity of online video into revenue.

Marissa Mayer said the challenge for television makers was to take their content to new, and rapidly-evolving, delivery formats - and that Google certainly wants to be "one of the players providing that platform."

Source: Yahoo News