I'm sorry for continuing on the same theme for a while but we are in the middle of a huge scrap for power at the moment and like a commentator leaning over his desk and yelling things like 'finish him!' I can't help but get caught up in the action.
Google seems to have reacted to Rupert Murdock's threat of pulling content off their search engines by changing their role in the whole process. Today they're unveiling a tool that allows 'television and online news agencies to create a platform to manage a bureau of citizen journalists.' Put simply, they are moving from searching content to providing content.
That's one pretty gigantic leap to take and a sign that Google aren't afraid to shift the goalposts either. Of course, they are promoting it like the Youtube tool is actually benefiting news corporations, allowing them to manage freelance, user generated material all in one place. But what they're basically doing is placing themselves in a position where Companies have to play to their rules if they want the best content.
In my personal opinion, it's a stroke of genius. In a sense they're almost cutting out the middle man. Rather than Google relying on news sites for search content, news sites will be forced to rely on Google for content to search. Recent witness footage from events like the Iran demonstrations and more localised events like pictures of recent flooding and storm damage shows this sort of material is gaining much more importance when it comes to presenting news, Google is exploiting that rather brilliantly.
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