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Google to Compete with Nielsen?
An anonymous reader writes "Jason Lee Miller thinks that Nielsen Media Research's ambitious new plan for measuring all types of video audiences could put it into competition with everyone's favorite company: Google. From the article: 'The Mountain View's next potential rival: Nielsen Media Research, the audience measurement company that has held a virtual monopoly in the sector for decades. And it shouldn't be surprising. Google's MO is information collection and research.'"
Sounds to me like you're more upset about the cancelling of Firefly than the Nielson rating system.
Nielson samples a very wide demographic, not just "boring old fogies". You can read about it here. The wikipedia article also brings up the point that their research system is not perfect, but it's close enough to give advertisers a picture of who's watching what. If it wasn't, Nielson wouldn't be in the TV ratings system for long.
It only samples a very small demographic: people who want to be monitored.
Is anyone else getting a little freaked out at how much Google is attempting to do on the web? It does stuff well, and a free market indicates that it is doing well, but I worry about a monopoly eventually. Papers and radios have limitations on how much of the audience that their company can reach, so as to prevent a monopolistic control over the information that people receive. The internet should be no different. How to enforce that though? - Make Google break up like Ma Bell did in the 70's? And at what point? Not yet I think, but the time will come soone I think.
..........FULL STOP.