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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.'"
Perhaps then the demographics will represent the hip, happening and geeky crowd as well as whatever boring old fogies Nielson represents. I hate it when my favourite shows are cancelled because "ratings were down".
Then again I'm not 'Merican, so I have no idea why good shows get cancelled *cough*Firefly*cough*. I just know that they do, and the dumb ones remain (latest reality show, WHO WANTS TO MARRY A MIDGET MILLIONAIRE APPRENTICE?)
Yeah, but even in a society where everyone gets a vote, you are still going to have around 20% that like reality shows, 15% that enjoy game shows, 20% that like daytime talkshows, 20% that like medical drama, and 20% that enjoy cop drama. So even in pefect world where everyone is counted, we will still have a lot of crap on tv because there are a lot of stupid people in the world that find comfort in watching the same old crap they have always watched.
Heck sometimes I think those people are threatened when a new show like firefly comes on. they just don't know how to classify it so they don't bother watching it.
Google does have a high usage of their search engine, but seriously, name me a single other product Google has that has higher usage than their competitors. Gmail? Nope. GCalendar? Nope. Google Earth/Maps, recent surveys say Mapquest still beats them out. Google News? Yahoo! News and CNN.com still have higher readership.
Oh, and it's not illegal to have a monopoly, what ever gave you that idea? It IS illegal to use your monopoly to push into new markets while pushing others out, or to use anticompetitive market behaviour. Considering most of Google's products aren't even linked to on their homepage, please explain to me how Google is doing either.
Hell, Google doesn't even lock their customers in. I use Google Calendar, Gmail and Google News, yet I still use ask.com and search.yahoo.com, direct competitors to Google's cash cow, almost as often as I use Google search itself.