"Local news is not a search problem"
February 8, 2008
That's Topix's response to Google's entry into the local news biz.
This is the same story I've been on about forever: it's about community. Community. Community.
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Comments
To defend Google for a minute: It doesn't matter if Local News is not a "search" problem. "Search" is not the be-all and end-all of world's information organization. Google's goal is not to search the world's information; it is to organize the world's information. Search is one form of organization. News recommendation, even local news recommendation, is another form of organization.
So I see no ideological problem with what Google is doing.
Where I do see a problem is when they spend inordinate amounts of time, effort, and money on thinks like Docs and Spreadsheets, or GTalk, Desktop widgets, mobile phones, etc. And they do it to the extent that they aren't really improving things like their Desktop Search client. As googlesystem.blogspot.com pointed out a few weeks ago, "search" is now disabled by default in the Desktop Client.
That just ain't right.
But local news? That's consistent with their mission. Android is not. Local news is.
Ah, I'm a total dummy. I so didn't get it. By saying "local news is not a search problem", Topix wasn't actually saying that Google is straying too far from its mission. Topix was actually saying that the expertise Google has in web search cannot be transferred/applied to local news. Is this correct? It probably is. I didn't get it at first.
Ignore my above comment.
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