December 03, 2009

new york times editors slain by the googlebot

The New York Times doesn’t even try to hide their Googly jealousy anymore. On Monday it was David Carr comparing Google to Al Qaeda with his 9/11 metaphor, and today it’s TV critic David Genzlinger laying it on thick with his review of Maria Bartiromo’s CNBC program “Inside the Mind of Google.”

Here’s my favorite snippet:

Ms. Bartiromo begins with an exceedingly gushy tour of Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., sounding as if she’s on the payroll of the company’s public-relations department. Such amazing cafeterias! Such wonderful employee perks! Such incredibly smart people everywhere!

It’s the kind of mush that makes you go channel surfing, especially the endless prattle about how smart everyone at Google is. Lots of businesses are full of smart people. Some of them are laying those smart people off because their business models have been undercut by Google. Newspapers, for instance.

That second graf is just begging to be slashed by the red pen. Aren’t there any editors over there anymore? Or were they all slain by the business model-destroying googlebot?