CEO Eric Schmidt in an interview with journal editors summarized Google's new aim: telling people what they want to do. "I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions," he said. "They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next."

With apps getting more popular there has been a lot of talk on whether internet browsers are being pushed into disuse. One thing is uncontestable though, Google's search box is no longer the undisputed starting point when accessing the internet. "We're trying to figure out what the future of search is," Schmidt admitted.

How does Google plan to do this? "We know roughly who you are, roughly what you care about, roughly who your friends are." Holman Jenkins of The Wall Street Journal goes on to explain what this implies, "let's say you're walking down the street. Because of the info Google has collected about you, Google knows, to within a foot, where you are...If you need milk and there's a place nearby to get milk, Google will remind you to get milk. It will tell you a store ahead has a collection of horse-racing posters, that a 19th-century murder you've been reading about took place on the next block."

Once again, Schmidt promises newspapers a profitable place in Google's future. "The only way the problem [of insufficient revenue for news gathering] is going to be solved is by increasing monetization, and the only way I know of to increase monetization is through targeted ads. That's our business." Newspapers have always answered questions that people were not aware they had to ask, and they simply have to continue doing this to fit in.

Between now and the future though, lie countless "legal, political and regulatory obstacles... antitrust, privacy and patent scrutiny" in the words of Jenkins. This is probably why newspaper houses are keeping up with the current trend of building apps and websites more easily accessible from mobile devices.

Still in preparation for the future, Google is currently providing its Android software at no cost to handset makers, with an estimated 200,000 of such phones activated daily. "You get a billion people doing something, there's lots of ways to make money." Schmidt stated, positive the newspaper industry will be able to benefit from the cashflow. "Absolutely, trust me. We'll get lots of money for it." If the new Google is going to be profitable for digital news, then the Google dream is one we hope will come true.

Source: The Wall Street Journal