Angus Kidman20 June 2007, 5:48 AM
Google has spent an inordinate amount of time in its Paris press day reinforcing to journalists how it is opening up to the media. As long as journos don't ask inconvenient questions.
 YouTube's founders: please don't ask us about copyright issues |
Google, the search giant frequently beset by scandals concerning privacy, copyright and market dominance, says that it wants to work harder to communicate with the media and the world at large.
But at its first press day in Paris, it's hard to escape the impression that the company is still far more concerned about getting maximum access to everyone else's information while holding its own very close to its chest.
If you want to suck up to someone, Paris is a pretty good place to do it: good food, good wine, and a pervading air of glamour despite the semi-crazed traffic.
No wonder Google has chosen the city for its Google Press Day 2007, which, as the company's flacks endlessly remind us, is the first time the company has done anything on this scale in Europe or, indeed, anywhere outside Mountain View (where Google has its HQ) and the odd Wall Street conference room.
It would be fair to say that Google hasn't always been very interested in communicating with the media. On one level, this is simply because its growth has been so rapid that developing a communications infrastructure has always played second fiddle to making sure the engineers have plenty of fizzy caffeinated drinks.
This excuse is trotted out by every European Google PR person I meet, so it's obviously the official company mantra.
Other factors also come into play. Like many technology companies (Microsoft and Apple immediately spring to mind), massive success affords Google a degree of arrogance. People are going to write about it even if all it does is produce press releases and the occasional blog post, so why make any extra effort?
To be fair, Google's arrogance appears minimal next to the massively secretive hype operation that is and has always been Apple.
Nonetheless, until the recent appointment of an Australian communications director and PR company, queries from Australian writer were more likely to be ignored than acknowledged by Google HQ.
And Google has also been guilty of some "interesting" attempts at controlling information, such as its ban on a journalist for using Google to research the private life of CEO Eric Schmidt.
 Google CEO Eric Schmidt: Google me? I'll Google your ass right off the media list... |
While the official theme of Google's first non-US press day might have been the launch of some regional YouTube variants and a more stringent environmental policy, the subtext was equally clear: we're going to talk more, and we're going to be less US-centric, starting with the 150 journalists in the room.
"I do believe that the best approach is to be open and transparent," Schmidt announced.
Other executives lined up to spruik the same message of openness and commitment to international markets. "Google is a company which has to serve users across the entire world," European operations president Nikesh Arora assured the crowd in his opening address.
(A side note: Google is obviously hoping that its staff are going to stay slim following APC's recent discussion of its skinny developer community and generous internal food policies. According to Arora, so far this year Google's 2,500 employees in Europe have this year gone through 20,000 bottles of water and 3500 kilograms of oranges. Note the emphasis on healthy food rather than croissants.)
However, even before proceedings officially kicked off, it was apparent that this willingness to be open and global had its limits.
"We can't be too transparent, or all our competitors would know what we were up to," Google vice president for global communications and public affairs Elliot Schrage commented at a press dinner the night before the official media activities.
 Welcome to our friends in the media: sorry, no comment. |
There was also a sense on the day that Google is still mildly astonished at the degree of interest it attracts. "We've gone from being a small company eight years ago to a company that's discussed perhaps more than we would like," Arora said.
ut the real evidence wasn't in such comments (revealing as they are). It was in the persistent (if polite) refusal to engage with many of the questions being asked when the presentations stopped.
How many data centres does Google have? "We don't release the number of data centres that we have."
What's the contingency for legal fees for copyright violations on YouTube? "We don't talk about specific financials."
OK, here's an easier one: how many pages do you index? Apparently its in the tens of billions, but a more specific number won't be released.
There was a reluctance to address obvious elephants in the room, such as YouTube's legal woes concerning copyright and content laws in different places. "It's important for a global platform such as YouTube to respect local laws and cultures," YouTube founder Steve Chen said.
The founders dodged the question of whether that embracing including Yahoo-style shopping of dissident bloggers in places like China.
Should Google feel obligated to answer questions from the media, or are demands for better access just another example of the kind of petulant whining that will make conventional journalism irrelevant, according to the froth-mouthed extremes of the blogosphere?
While we don't need to know every last detail (including the number of oranges Google staff eat), there are plenty of reasons why Google needs to share more information. For one thing, it's a listed company, so its investors have a right to know how their investment is being spent.
For another, it has huge amounts of data about the habits of millions of individuals. Even if they're getting a free and excellent search service, they're entitled to know what else happens with that information.
Ultimately, too, Google has to walk the walk. A company that wants to index everything in sight looks a tad hypocritical if it doesn't want to be equally open about its own activities. The European Press Day was a good start -- Schmidt was much more accessible than many CEOs at similar events -- but there's still clearly some work to be done.
Disclosure: Angus Kidman's hotel room in Paris was paid for by Google (though ironically the company didn't cover Internet access charges).
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