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I have been in the technology trade publishing
business since 1986 and one thing that has remained constant is how often we
tend to look over our shoulders at our competitors. Some of this is a function
of advertising, the fuel that stokes our own salaries and keeps our pubs alive.
But some of it is just watching the employment market and seeing what happens
to your colleagues as new publications gain influence and hire
away the experienced hands.
The reason I am writing about this now is that we
are in the midst of some big changes, and the biggest competitor today is
Google. I will explain why after I give you some historical context from my own
sordid career.
Back in the early days, we were most worried about
the influence of business pubs like the Wall Street Journal and Fortune and
Forbes. When I worked at PC Week, which at the time could have been the most
influential trade paper of its day in the late 1980s, we kept a careful eye on
those guys and did what we could to make sure that our business coverage was
solid and that the advertisers got the ear and pocketbooks of computer buyers
in PC Week. I think you could say that we did a credible job, and I don't think
this is nostalgia talking here. As an example to prove my point, it was a very
competitive job market then and it took some work to hire those few trade
journalists to make the leap from our little trade press ghetto into the
business pubs. Nevertheless, some of them did make the transition (David
Churbuck who ran the Forbes web is one notable example) and went on to do some
great things.
In the middle 1990s, it was the dot-com era and journalists
who were being bought up to run Web sites were the ones to watch. Wired
Magazine and the Industry Standard were key players. The trade publishers were
having a hard time keeping their own people as the money pump from the dot coms
continued to gush. Several publishers had their own misplaced dot com ventures
(including some early missteps from my current employer), and we all thought
the Internet was going to make print pubs obsolete.
Well obviously that didn't happen, but when the
bubble burst in 2000 the print business went into a four-year decline. I keep
hoping that we have reached the bottom of this decline.
Today though we are in a new world, where the lines
between print and Web are not so clear. It isn't a matter of Web pubs competing
with print pubs, but the entire Internet is arranged differently and people are
getting their information – especially technical information – in some very different
ways. Gone are those general news portal sites. Does anyone still bookmark
CNN.com and TheStreet.com? Indeed, what is a bookmarked site anymore? I can't
remember the last time I bookmarked a site. So yesterday.
Today's Internet sources for technical information
are a motley brew of blogs, micro-targeted specialty sites, personal email
newsletters, RSS feeds, and sites geared towards computing enthusiasts. Tom's
Hardware and TechTarget.com are the new king-makers of the day. But the real
winner in this collection is Google. And I am not just talking about using
their search page, although that is where most people start when they think
about the company.
The World of Google has become the 900-pound gorilla
for supplying the best technical information. When we survey our engineering
audience, they start by googling for some product information. While we would
like them to first go to our own Web sites, the reality of the situation is
that Google is their default home page.
When our readers try to find one of the articles on
our Web sites, they first find it by going to Google. When a blogger wants to
sell advertising and support their writing habit, they go to Google and use
their services to provide banners on their sites. When a reader wants to stop
pop-up ads from annoying him, he downloads a Google Toolbar to do the deed. And
now Google has a desktop search tool that will index your own content on your
local hard drive and integrate the search results into its Web pages, a truly
brilliant move to extend its reach into your desktop.
http://desktop.google.com/
Microsoft has it wrong: they are trying to extend
Windows outward, across the Internet. That is yesterday's thinking. While the
desktop is important, Google has it completely right: take the search metaphor,
and extend it downwards so that all of your information has just been merged
with the zillions of Internet-based sources.
Google has penetrated everywhere, and there is good
reason why the stock market has rewarded them, as quirky and idiosyncratic
their IPO was earlier this year. (James
Cramer is saying it will soon go to $250 a share, which is so 90s thinking, but
he has a point.) They are a force to be reckoned with, and Internet publishers
have no choice but to embrace and extend their model if they are going to
succeed.
One reason for the long delay for this missive was
my annual charity bike-athon for Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Last
week I along with 300 other sturdy souls rode our bikes 105 miles through
For those of you that are curious, I began doing
these rides in 2000 and have raised more than $50,000 for various causes. My
rides for JDRF are in memory of Bob Frezza.
Those of you who have never contributed to these causes and would like to start
now, send me an email and I'll add you to my fundraising list for next year. For
those of you that generously contributed to my campaign, you have my continued
thanks, appreciation, and awe. Many of my contributors are friends and
colleagues, but many of you are people that I have never met face to face and
are just at the other end of this email every week or so. I thought of all of you
as I neared the end of that six-mile hill and struggled to push my bike to the
top. Thanks again for such a fantastic opportunity and all of your support.
Entire contents copyright 2004 by David Strom, Inc.
David Strom, dstrom@cmp.com, +1 (516) 562-7151
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