Back in 2001 I met with Eric Schmidt and suggested that Google Zeitgiest could be turned into a killer media company. Well, I very much doubt that had anything to do with the news today that Zeitgeist is powering Al Gore’s new Current cable channel, but I’m pleased just the same. Gore’s channel will have Google segments built from search data. Very cool.
From Search Engine Journal’s coverage:
“Google Current,” built using samplings of popular Google search data, including from Google Zeitgeist, complements the free-flowing pod format with news updates each half-hour. Thirty seconds to three minutes in length, these segments buck conventional news practices by reporting not on what media editors decide is “news,” but on the topics people are actually searching for right now. So news isn’t what the network thinks you should know, but what the world is searching to learn.