'Don't fear the internet'

2006-08-29 10:31

Edinburgh, Scotland - The rise of the internet is as revolutionary as the invention of the printing press, a senior Google Inc executive said on Saturday - but old media like television should not fear it.

Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products and user experience, told an audience at the Edinburgh International Television Festival that the internet innovator was television's friend, not its rival.

"We're computer scientists," she said. "We're not brilliant storytellers or content creators."

Many in the television industry fear the inexorable growth of Google, and the internet in general, will spell the end of traditional media like television.

Producers have looked with particular alarm at the rapid rise of user-generated video. Stunts, spoofs and other clips posted on video-sharing sites like YouTube or Google Video can attract millions of viewers - viewers who might otherwise be watching television.

User-generated content has spread to television through stations like MTV Flux, which broadcasts viewer-selected and viewer-created video clips.

Mayer said Google had failed to foresee the huge popularity of user-generated content - its original model for online video emphasised "premium content" which viewers would pay a small fee to access. The success of YouTube over the past year - rapidly eclipsing Google Video in popularity - took many by surprise.

User empowerment

Mayer said the growth of Google and the internet were both user-driven - and that's what makes them so revolutionary.

"There is a huge amount of user empowerment," Mayer said.

"I think we are seeing something that is the equivalent of the printing press in our day and age."

But she said that did not mean the end of traditional storytelling and information-sharing through television. Mayer said Google saw the two media as complementary.

"I don't think what is happening online will replace what is happening offline," she said.

"I think both the offline and the online media will continue to have very successful, rich user experiences for some time.

"On the whole, I think the experience of using a television and using the internet are so different ... there are social reasons that will cause both mediums to survive."

Both, she said, had a common interest in finding ways to convert the popularity of online video into revenue.

Mayer said the challenge for television-makers was to take their content to new, and rapidly evolving, delivery formats - and Google wants to be "one of the players providing that platform".

- AP