Google and Facebook emerge as the new media barons
new york — A handful of big technology companies are becoming the next William Randolph Hearst and Walt Disney: They wield enormous power over what news and entertainment get made.
In case you needed more evidence of the power of big tech in people’s lives, Google is giving you more. The company is negotiating with some news and information companies, including Time and CNN, to create tailor-made news and information for a new Google project. The idea, as the Wall Street Journal first reported, is to funnel people from Google to allied organisations’ articles, photos and video that people can swipe through quickly, presumably on their smartphones. It’s worth cautioning that Google parent company Alphabet releases a bunch of different projects and many of them languish This reported initiative — dubbed “Stamp” — could, too. Regardless, it’s another reminder that Google, Facebook and a small number of other technology companies now have the power to control what news, entertainment programming and information gets made.
This has been de facto true for a while. If a news organisation like this one wanted to lure people to read its articles, it needed to make sure people could find them prominently in Google searches, and it made sure the articles, headlines and other information were alluring to people scrolling through their Facebook news feeds.
Then the powerful gatekeepers started to dictate the format of news and entertainment. Google wanted web pages to load on computers and smartphones without even fractional seconds of delay, and it compelled many websites and advertisers to change to meet its goals. Facebook did something similar. Makers of digital video, news, apps and other media ignore the wishes of Google, Facebook, Apple, Twitter and Snapchat at their peril. Their billions of users are too alluring. Google alone has at least seven products with 1 billion or more users each month.
But something new is happening. This has gone well beyond the powerful technology companies as gatekeepers. Now they are calling the shots about what news and entertainment gets made in the first place and whether the businesses survive.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg believed the future of the internet was going to be video, and he is effectively orchestrating his vision into reality. The company has created financial incentives for companies and celebrities to make videos to reach more than 2 billion people on Facebook and related digital hangouts each month. The company can tweak its computer algorithms to make Facebook users more inclined to watch those videos. The company has faced pushback for its video demands, but Facebook can create its own positive feedback loop to slowly compel the internet to reshape to Facebook’s tastes and business goals. — Bloomberg