I’ve always been a glass half-full person, but I have to admit that now the glass has to be half full with vodka. I’ve become a little bit less optimistic about the nature of the human species. My feeling is that you’re not very optimistic about the next three, five years. I do go back to the point that I said, an independent press is only independent to the extent it’s not dependent on any singular sources of financial support. And there’s no magical formula to the balance. Now you may consider that enough or not enough, but it is indeed the truth. We’ve said publicly, we are among the largest supporters of journalism in the world.įrankly, I don’t know who’s larger in terms of true dollars spent. I have to tell you that inside Google, I get increasingly asked very hard financial questions. Might it not be wise for us to make sure we have that collaborative relationship? And I have to tell you that it is becoming more transactional. Technology is going to continue to change, a digital society is going to continue to change. And I looked at him and said, that’s not ever going to happen. I can remember once a dean of a journalism school said, I will be so happy when we’re through this period of transformation. But one thing I fear, and I’ve said this to many of you, I fear that the direction we’re headed is towards a completely transactional relationship.Īnd I don’t think that’s a healthy thing. To me, the key thing, there’s no simple answer here. And I think the question that we’re all confronting is, what’s the best way to address that? What’s the best way for Google to express its supportive role in a society without breaking the very underpinnings of the nature of the open web and a search engine itself?Īnd do you have the answer to that question? The best way to cooperate? So from a commercial perspective, not much value.įrom a societal perspective, and from the overall health of our business, it means an awful lot. Now, at the same time, from a financial perspective, no.īut that shouldn’t be news to you, right? What advertisers, particularly in the digital world, want to put their ads up against a story about people starving in Darfur, right? So those news queries, we don’t make direct revenue off of that. But if I look at it from a big picture, we should be concerned about the future and the success of journalism. Indeed, it’s a measure of open societies. We believe that the role of journalism helps maintain those open societies. We know our business is healthiest in open societies. Well, let me give you a very direct, self-interested answer. And let me kind of answer that in a couple of ways as I am often asked that question. Richard Gingras: It’s very important to Google. Pia Rehnquist: How important are our news to Google? Because you said it’s not a big part of the search statistics, but yet you are here. Here is an edited version of that exchange with Rehnquist and Congress participants. Yesterday we published Gingras’ speech as we received several requests from the audience about getting their hands on his presentation.
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