Meanwhile, Google was still a private tech start-up in Silicon Valley. It didn't even go public until August 2004. On Wall Street, it's been a huge hit. But weaknesses are showing. Google is not winning in the world's largest Internet market, China.

Meanwhile, Google was still a private tech start-up in Silicon Valley. It didn't even go public until August 2004. On Wall Street, it's been a huge hit. But weaknesses are showing. Google is not winning in the world's largest Internet market, China.

Apparently, Rupert Murdoch is interested in owning Dow Jones. This is the same Dow Jones that just predicted a majority of its 2009 revenue will come from its digital services, not traditional print. And nobody wants AOL, so Time Warner is struggling to find a new business model for this Internet pioneer.

That brings us to a few things that have just happened or are about to happen.

Two Bay Area newspapers, the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury-News, recently announced major layoffs. Yahoo just ditched its very expensive, media-savvy CEO. And in August, the Big Ten Network will launch.

Each of these three events carries its own seismic implications.

Newspaper layoffs are now like laptop battery recalls or poison chemicals from China. Yeah, so what's new? What's new is that there's no turning back.

Print industry insiders now know this and admit it, sadly and privately. Craigslist gutted the newspapers' old business model by coming up with easy and efficient classified advertising. Now newspapers are stuck trying to sell content. Not an easy thing to do in the Internet Age. Many major dailies are still trying to figure out how to merge online and print staffs. Too little, way too late. I don't need a local paper for the movie listings anymore; it's more efficient to find them online. Suburban newspapers with sharp local focus may continue to do OK. But big metro dailies will become nonprofits like your local museum or opera company. Or they'll simply fade away, another relic.

Meanwhile, The New York Times, USA Today and The Washington Post endeavor to become national newspapers and Web sites. In that arena, they must compete with TV news networks, Yahoo News, Google News and the blogosphere.

Yahoo, like AOL, was an early powerhouse on the Internet. It outlived other search engines like Excite and Lycos. It became more inclusive than AOL, which foolishly assumed Internet users could be confined in a walled garden. But Yahoo lost the search battle to Google and then generally lost its way.

It didn't buy major league talent to compete with cable TV but pretended to be a content company. Yahoo has no Jon Stewart, no Sopranos. Yahoo didn't develop superior community sites, but it wanted to be a community center. It bought Flickr, one of the better photo-sharing services, but it has myriad competitors.

Yahoo is now a set of widely used tools e-mail, IM, Flickr. Is it simply a tool company? Can Yahoo be rejuvenated? Does Yahoo go the way of Western Union, now pared down to simply wiring money around the globe? Can you even send a telegram now? Who cares?

Finally, there is the upcoming launch of the Big Ten Network, which will carry football games of some very popular Midwestern universities. Big Ten will also produce other sports and university-related programs, some of it to be delivered via the Internet. This pulls content from traditional TV channels.

Copyright: news.com



Submit to Slashdot Add to del.icio.us Submit to Reddit Add to Technorati Furl
Send by Yahoo Messenger to a friend

GO Back!