Apr 09
6
Che Google
When you look at who owns what in the media and content industries you can understand just a little how incredibly disruptive Google is.
Have a look at this graphic (original is here) to see how incredibly concentrated the power behind the content is – and how few organizations control how much of the content and how it gets out to the consumer. That was until Google.
Google is the ultimate facilitator. (Read what Henry Porter has to say about it in The Observer)
But when you look at what Google does, and then look at what The Pirate Bay does, is there that much difference?
Ultimately both have an index of addresses and provide the consumer with a look-up service that tells you where something, or someone is.
As a result of reading the article in The Observer I came across Scribd. This is a site which links you to books.
And then there is Foriegn Movies – this points you to a massive resource of non-English language content that you see in art house theatres, but can rarely purchase on DVD for some reason. (And note the mis-spelling in the url).
All these websites do roughly what Google does….
And then they direct you to repositories of content at places like Rapid Share. Ever heard of Rapid Share? If you download movies you might have, but otherwise you probably haven't. You may then be surprised to hear that according to Alexa Rapid Share is one of the most visited sites in the world, sitting right up there next to Microsoft.
So, back to media ownership… The big 6 controls the production, the distribution, and not surprisingly, pretty much also controls the societies (or at least those parts of the boards that are not made up of the creatives themselves) that lobby on behalf of the authors, directors, etc.
And on the other side of the discussion you have Google.
Content used to be king. Che was the great revolutionary.
All hail, Che Google.