Google: YouTube won't cannibalize TV
The uniformity of Google Speak is as consistent as a McDonald's hamburger, and to many, as unsatisfying.
Google's top South East Asia exec, Richard Kimber, managing director of operations, is the latest to chime in on the ecumenical goodness of Google, as cited by ABC News:
We see Google being a key facilitating agent in the media industry.
Kimber is a new member of the Google South East Asia team and he has set about on the Google PR mission of assuring South East Asia media that Google does "not even see itself as a media company":
We are essentially a technology company, and we are really focused on advertising and using technology as a way of bringing information to all participants in the Internet.
So our global mission is to organise the world's information and we see ourselves very much as the organiser of the information, that's our role.
Sound familiar? Perhaps Kimber was personally tutored by Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Just like Schmidt, however, Kimber is not shy about stating Google's desire to dominate, everywhere:
We're continuing to invest in local engineering here in Australia, so we're looking to attract the best talent and recruit them locally, here in Australia.
We're going to continue build out our business here, broaden the range of services that we have and leverage off the leading position that we have in this market, where we account for about 80 per cent of the search traffic and we're the number one website in Australia.
When you turn to Asia, we're looking to build out our franchise within the Asia Pacific region. So within Asia there's still a long way to go on the Internet and lots and lots of countries to explore.
In other words, don't bet against the Internet, Google's Internet, that is, in South East Asia.
On the heels of Google's acquisition of YouTube, Kimber is anxious to assuage Australian television, in particular.
We don't see it as cannibalising the TV, but more as an adjunct to it.
How so? Kimber apparently read the Google-YouTube-CBS press release last week evangelizing Google-YouTube-TV Network love (see "Google’s fuzzy YouTube logic"). Kimber's reassuring words:
The media lends itself to short bursts of content, so rather than being a full TV channel it generally will be used for teasers. Typically, people are watching shorter clips and then they will still go to TV to watch the full show.
We're seeing that in the US, with shows like the David Letterman Show using it as a way of promoting activity on the TV channel.
Should South East Asia television take Kimber at his word? After all, Schmidt believes Google should be “using our advertising system, our targetability, for every form of advertising.”
I revealed Schmidt's designs on TV last August, as I report in "Google CEO wants $74 billion TV ad market." Schmidt touts that Google has a "good shot" at delivering "targeted, measurable television ads."
Schmidt is confident that Google has a good shot at delivering all the world's advertising, actually; The Google mission he reaffirmed at the Q2 earnings call:
We are in the search business, so we need all of the information… ultimately our goal at Google is to have the strongest advertising network and all the world’s information, that’s part of our mission.
What else is Google's leader confident in? Using the Google cloud to displace Microsoft, as I revealed and extensively analyzed over the past few weeks. SEE Can Google trump Microsoft?
ALSO:"Google Enterprise strategy: ‘Death to the hierarchy’" and “Google battles Microsoft” and “Google: Who needs advertising?”