Google is ‘hugely dangerous’ to newspaper industry

Posted by Evan Fell on November 9, 2007 at 11:53 AM

Anne Spackman, editor of Timesonline told delegates at the Society of Editors conference that Google is ”hugely dangerous” and ”the number one topic of conversation at News Corp is Google.”

Google has become a trusted news source despite the fact that it does not produce any news itself and Spackman feels as though it is the biggest influence on the news business.

Spackman spoke about digital media saying ”digital evolves extremely fast” and therefore, newspapers cannot afford to and should not hold back the pace of change online.

She explains,"We have to be careful that in our rush to integrate, which is driven as much by business reasons as by reasons of journalism, that we don't hold back the pace of change."

With evolving technology and changes in consumer behavior news sites will begin to be viewed on smaller devices with smaller screens. This along with developments in the iPod and changes to Google algorithms really means that newspapers must be able to react quickly to change.

However Spackman has said that she was misquouted in the article. We'll try to have more information on that soon.

Source: Journalism.co.uk

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