BusinessWeek Guy Declares War on "Enemy" Google

BusinessWeek senior writer Roben Farzad has declared that Google is the "ultimate enemy of the journalism that we constitutionally cherish."

Appearing on the magazine's Digital Dish, an online talk show, Farzad stated, "Google is bankrupting us. Google is killing us." He estimates that Google will "either run or broker half of the world's $55 billion in online advertising" by 2009.

To help save failing news organizations, Farzad has proposed a special-profits tax on the search-engine giant, one meant to return lost advertising revenues to the companies whose content Google crawls in order to present a link, headline, and brief abstract to its enormous audience.

I'm going to assume his proposal was made tongue-in-cheek -- though, if so, he may wish to work on his delivery. But this idea sucks, even as a joke. First, socialism and the Internet belong to entirely different epochs of human history. Plus, such a retrograde idea as imposing a new tax burden on what is arguably the most innovative company in the world should be laughed right off the monitor.

The reality is that Google is probably the largest single referrer of visitors to Business Week and every other old media company's site. If the people running news organizations cannot figure out how to monetize this free service from Google, more fool them!

Strangely, around the web, some editors seem to be taking Farzad's ludicrous proposal seriously, at least to the extent they are linking to it. I've linked to it, too, but only to ridicule it. Transferring advertising revenue via taxation back to the companies that were asleep at the wheel for over over a decade, is the worst idea I've heard of since Ford introduced the DOA Edsel.

Nevertheless, I'm sure at least a few media dinosaurs would favor this "If you can't beat 'em, tax 'em" strategy of taking on Google. You know, reward failure and penalize success.

Meanwhile, April figures from Nielsen Online show that Google's share of the U.S. search market continues to grow, up to 62% versus 27% for a combination of Yahoo and Microsoft, which, of course, have not yet managed to combine.

When you're that big, you're bound to be a target, both in jest and in reality. I, for one, am not laughing...