Google and Intellectual Property

I had a lunch yesterday in Manhattan with a colleague named Sophie Wade and we talked amongst other things about the growth of Google, a popular topic these days. Sophie is on the executive team of Not Traditional Media, which is a company started by John Bernbach and Martin Puris (John was a Director of Omnicom, an executive at DDB and the son of the famous Bill Bernbach and Martin started the well-known agency Ammiratis Puris.)

Google has grown to be an incredible behemoth of an organization, and still has the most favored nation status as companies go. Perhaps that is because most Americans tend to love the underdog. But at a $87B market cap, they are no underdog. So what's the real story?

Today on my very favorite radio show, WNYC's Brian Lehrer show, they were coincidentally discussing that same topic. I called in and asked John Battelle, the founder of Wired Magazine what he thought about Google facing issues with intellectual property and copyright issues. Click here to listen. Scroll down to "Soul Searching". (My question is about the 15:00 minute mark, but the whole interview is worth listening to.)

The reason I asked the question is because Google indexes a lot of data through mining through billions of other people's websites. Sophie and I were talking about whether Google would quickly move into other areas other than Ad Words monetized through aggregating and indexing data, or become more or a media portal like MSN, AOL or Yahoo! Companies like these, as real companies have to, license content for legal and business reasons. For example, the financial data at finance.yahoo.com is licensed, and Yahoo! pays good money to do so.

Google on the other hand, simply lists that information as far as I can tell without paying, yet they are the destination of choice. Will this create problems for them as people get worried about their data being effectively monetized by Google without seeing payment in return? Google was recently criticized for scanning books so that online readers could have access to that information. Publisher's complaints were that Google would make money from authors work without having permission to actually index and make that information available. It is true that Google is by far the most trafficked site on the internet. By indexing all of this data, Google becomes the direct source of our perception of all things searchable. Without getting into a discussion about the taxonomy of data on the internet and it's limitations, it could be argued that we as consumers of information have given Google an incredible power and it would serve us well to be careful with giving that "attention" away.

Another area of concern for Google that we faced when I ran AdCritic.com, was using other people's content for review purposes under what's called "Fair Use". With video.google.com, one of the services they provide is to allow any person to upload your video content. The idea being that unique niche content can be made available for fee or for free. Google has plentiful bandwidth on their video servers, so they absorb the cost, and you upload your video - and if you choose, you can monetize the sale of that video if people are interested enough to pay for the video of you training your poodle to bellydance. I'm not sure it's enough to suggest that the digital signature "yes I agree I will not upload someone else's copyrighted video" will work.

But don't get me wrong: this all very fascinating, and Google has done some amazing things. Their company page talks about their philosophies as a company, and besides getting to bring the dog to work, it seems like a really cool place. The question is, will they be able to adapt and remain a progressive and just company, or just become another 800 pound gorilla?