Google: Flipping Off The Newspapers
from the happy-now,-bitches? dept
We've been joking that the latest moves from Google designed to "help" the newspaper industry have been anything but helpful. Instead, they seem more designed to make newspapers irrelevant faster, while making it look like they're helping. It's a cynical view to be sure. And, while I'm not a huge fan of the whole "Fake Famous CEO" meme that's been hot since Dan Lyons created the Fake Steve Jobs, Shane Richmond has posted an amusing email to newspaper folks sent from a "Fake Eric Schmidt" that's too good not to share:MESSAGE FOR THE NEWSPAPER INDUSTRY
Listen assholes, all we ever hear from you is whining and we're getting sick of it: "Waaah! Google's killing our business! Waaah! Google sends us traffic we can't monetise! Waaah! All our readers are going elswhere!"
---- you. Seriously, ---- you. You're a sorry-assed bunch of internet-misunderstanding ------------- and I'm getting tired of waiting for you to die.
So we've launched a new product that we think will help. It's called Google Fast Flip.
First, let me explain the name because this email is going to Rupert Murdoch who I think is a Brit or something and won't get the joke.
When you give someone the finger in America, you're "flipping them off". Since this new section is essentially us giving the news industry the finger, I wanted a name that reflected that. We were going to calling the site "flipping the news" but we thought that was too obvious. We toyed with "flipper" for a while but we've settled on "fast flip". It still makes me chuckle every time I say it.
Anyway, you ink-stained ------- whine on and on about how the internet doesn't provide "serendipity". I had to look it up (yeah, I Googled it, -------------, see what the internet can do for you?) and it seems that what it means, in a newspaper sense, is that sometimes you turn over the page and the next section doesn't suck.
Most of the time, of course, the next section does suck. But people forget that. It's like when you think of someone and then they call you. You never think about all the times that you thought of them and they didn't call you. Serendipity makes newspaper readers forget that most of the time the next section does suck.
Somehow you goons have based an entire business on making people pay for ---- they don't want. Well done. Our business model is based on building the best ------- search engine on the planet so that people get what they do want. And you morons wonder why our business is booming and yours is going to hell.
Well we've replicated serendipity for you. Fast Flip jams together a bunch of articles based on a secret algorithm we've developed. Ok, ok, it's random but that's serendipity right?
And here's the part you --------- will love: we'll share the revenue with you. Of course the ads will be ours, not yours. Oh, and Fast Flip shows enough of the article that readers will decide not to click through and read your pages at all.
But you'll thank us for it because we've saved your business model. Happy now bitches?
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Filed Under: fake eric schmidt, fast flip, newspapers
Companies: google
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We don't.. obviously.. actually if you consider information and the control of information power, they are loosing alot more than a business model. IMO the media has far to much control over public opinion as it is.
I love to see the bias spun every which way, as it is on the interweb. The centrifugal force usually brings the truth out into the open, due to the variety of opinions. Some of which boggle the mind...
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THAT was for a great laugh.
You go, Google!
I'm glad the monetizing aspect was ditched because I would have been very pissed if I were greeted with a "Yous gots to pay to view, thief!" message while trying to read the news, available anywhere else on the web at no cost.
Kudos for this statement and especially for the attitude to which it was presented.
Print that, Murdoch. It's news.
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Re: THAT was for a great laugh.
Fox would probably report it and say it's actually from the CEO of Google.
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Re: Re: THAT was for a great laugh.
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Couldn't resist
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giving it up for them
See, Google News sends viewers to the papers' websites, where the newspaper can attempt to monetize the click-throughs. But Fast Flip keeps all that traffic on Google's servers, to do with as they please. That will completely end the traffic to most news sites, especially for the sound-byte style of reporting so popular now. Such short articles appear on Fast Flip's preview pane in their entirety so viewers can see just how short and sucky the article really is before they make the mistake of following the link over to it.
The article does point to a solution; a way to slip the noose. And that is to bring back the longer format investigative reporting style so largely abandoned by the mainstream media.
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