block that metaphor
I finally read Ken Auletta’s New Yorker piece about Google this past weekend, and of course with 20/20 hindsight enjoyed the vignette of Karmazin complaining about Google’s plan for advertising transparency. David Carr’s piece in the Times this morning is a good companion.
It’s a wan reminder that all reigns are temporary, that the court of self-appointed media royalty was serving at the pleasure of an advertising economy that itself was built on inefficiency and excess. Google fixed that.
I found the 9/11 metaphor a bit over the top, however.
Those of us who covered media were told for years that the sky was falling, and nothing happened. And then it did. Great big chunks of the sky gave way and magazines tumbled — Gourmet!? — that seemed as if they were as solid as the skyline itself. But to those of us who were here back in September of 2001, we learned that even the edifice of Manhattan itself is subject to perforation and endless loss.
In Carr’s world is Google the Al Qaeda of the media business? Please.