The NYT reports, We’re Scared of Google

In an article posted on Aug 10, the New York Times asked, essentially, if they should be worried about Google turning into a content provider.

They draw comparison to the fact that their own site Knol, ranks it’s Buttermilk Pancake recipe higher than that of the domestic queen, Martha Stewart. (Knol also ranks #4 on Yahoo!)

There seemed to be a lot of bluster back and forth from the Times, Jason Calacanis of Mahalo and a co-chief executive officer from Martha Stewart’s OmniMedia.

“If in fact a Google property is taking money away from Google’s partners, that is a real problem,” said Wenda Harris Millard, the co-chief executive of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.

The Times quotes Calacanis as saying:

“Google can say they are not in the content business, but if they are paying people and distributing and archiving their work, it is getting harder to make that case,” said Jason Calacanis, the chief executive of Mahalo, a search engine that relies on editors to create pages on a variety of subjects. “They are competing for talent, for advertisers and for users” with content sites, he said.

Google has always promised it will never compromise the objectivity of its search results and the thought that the search giant is ranking one of its own pages higher than any other is still rattling some folk.

“When you see Knol pages rank high, they are there because they have earned their position,” said Gabriel Stricker, a spokesman for Google.

Knol has been called a potential rival to Wikipedia and other sites whose content spans a wide range of topics, including Mahalo and About.com, a property of The New York Times Company that uses experts called “guides” to write articles on a broad range of topics.

I’m not exactly sure if this is News or not. It’s kind of an opinion piece, kinda, and it’s also a bit of bluster. You know, like when your cat falls off the back of the couch, jumps up an walks away casually, as though saying “I *totally* nailed that landing!”, only this is the NYT saying “we’re so not even worried about this. You know, we’re just pointing out the possible links in case, you know, *you* guys didn’t know.”

Right.