The Other Google Bombshell - Newspapers, Please Freak Out Now

Everyone is talking about Google's new operating system. A threat to Microsoft?

Journalists should note he way Google announced it -- in a blog post. A threat to newspapers?

From the Wall Street Journal's email alert (emphasis added):

News Alert from The Wall Street Journal

Google Inc. is preparing to launch an operating system for personal computers, a direct assault on the turf of software giant Microsoft Corp., which has long dominated the market for software that runs PC applications.

The Silicon Valley Internet giant announced the new move in a blog post late Tuesday night. It said the software, which will initially target low-end portable PCs called netbooks, would be based on its Chrome Web browser and available to consumers in the second-half of 2010.

Yes, folks. The Wall Street Journal is quoting a blog post in what may turn out to be the biggest tech news of the year. (So did the Washington Post, AP, and everyone else.) And Google didn't even think it was necessary to call the newspapers.

As of 6 am EST, Google search found 626 articles about the story (yes, there's some irony there):

For those of you still on the fence about the role of blogs -- there's your answer.

Follow Andy Sernovitz on Twitter: www.twitter.com/sernovitz

Comments

[InofTouch]

Not really a big deal, So google is side-steping the media like enterainers and athletes do on a daily bases

[nellie]

When Google can do investigative reporting, maybe the news organizations will have something to worry about. In the meantime, the public should be freaking out that investigative journalism seems to lose more ground every year—and will only lose more if we mistakenly think internet blogs will be an effective substitute.

[ramblingjohnny]

Considering the massive resource that google as if they want to they could have a newsroom the like of with we never seen before! And it would not cost them more than a very small drop in a very very big bucket! Think about that!

[rip]

huh? Google posted this on an official Google corporate blog, how is this a big deal? How is this different from any other press release, other than it being in static electronic form?

Seems like a highly dramatic article about a non-event. Or are you suggesting that newspaper journalists now having to spend 15 seconds going to a corporate website rather than wait for a personalized phone call is somehow a stunning and devastating development.

[S1m0n]

The big deal is that it isn't a corporate press release. Google's no longer seeing the media as an important information vector, which is why they didn't bother sending them a presser. They know that they can post it on their blog, and the media will have to come to them for the story.

[noamjunior]

Google should charge the newspapers that run stories about google

[Foxnewsisajoke]

and they should do this why?

[kudzumaster]

Irony. Some newspapers want to charge google for making their articles available in their search engine.

[Jaywalkker]

Sounds like the blogger who pounced on the Fox reporter outside the ACORN meeting. The Fox reporter got irritated that the "press" was allowed in but he wasn't, which was then spinned into, "so are you saying Fox now admits that bloggers are members of the press?"

More print reporters are turning to the citizen journalist for aid in covering a story as well.

The planets seem to be anecdotally aligning for the internet and the blogosphere to be considered legitimate. Not sure how how to react to that.

[Tena]

Blogs went mainstream solidly during the campaign and that's all she wrote vis-a-vis a wide-open internet, which no longer exists, and dead tree news.

Both have been killed dead by the blogs.