I went to the speech today, and I must say, I am impressed. Douglas Merrill is a brilliant speaker, which to say the least is quite hard to find these days. At first I wanted to know why Google would want to invest over $4.5 billion in the UHF spectrum. Not long after he started speaking, I realized their reasons, it is built right into their corporate culture. Let information be free.He showed a few data slides about searches that had taken place. One of the more interesting slides was about and earthquake. Almost immediately after an earthquake on the west coast happened there was a spike in their searches several orders of magnitude greater than just one hour before. The search pointed surfers to the USGS website for more information.Dr. Merrill pointed out the spike, but then a small blip about 6 hours after the spike. What was this blip? It was the newspapers reporting about the earthquake themselves. He then said, “Reporters should be scared of the internet, new happens fast, and the internet provides information now.” I agree, even though I want to be a journalist.So, what am I to do about instant information about events? Nothing. How can I still be relevant in a world of instant information? I suppose the only answer to that is quality. Of course, if I subscribe to the thought of there only being one answer, then the Internet just won. The truth is adapt, use the web, allow information to be free, and be relevant.With all of those previous items in place, instead of people waiting for the news to come to them, they do the search, and instead of going to whatever site Google sends them to originally, you become the source Google sends you to. Oversimplified? Sure, but simple ideas are often the best as succeeding, and the hardest to attain.
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