Jon Friedman of MarketWatch is apparently looking to build pageviews. While Jon is an able analyst of all things media, he has pulled a John Dvorak in tomorrow’s column by nakedly trying to be the only guy on the other side of a mostly settled issue.
His argument: While Google may contain news and information, and it may aggregate people and show them ads as they gaze at said news and information, Google is not a media company. Why not? Because it doesn’t create content.
While he is wrong and this definition of media excludes some old-line media companies, Jon does make two fair points:
- To the extent that Google acts like a media company and recombines with an old-line media firm that would be bad (c.f. AOL/Time-Warner)
- Google shouldn’t want to be lumped in with all those fusty low-multiple media companies anyways