Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search and User Experience at Google is testifying on Capitol Hill today before the Senate Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet.
She will discuss the ways innovation can help preserve journalism, and how Google is "doing its part by driving significant traffic to online news publishers, by helping them generate revenue through advertising, and by providing tools and platforms that enable them to reach millions of people," as the company describes it on the Google Public Policy Blog.
Google has made Mayer's entire testimony available for download (pdf). "Every day, millions of people search the web for relevant answers to their questions," says Mayer. "In response, search engines strive to connect each user with the right results, and those results can come in any number of different forms: a web page, an image, a video, a map, or a news story - something of particular relevance to today's hearing."
"In each of those cases, search engines play the role of connecting users with high-quality content -- often journalistic -- ultimately sending traffic to the publisher's website. Google is one such search engine that people use to find answers online," she adds.
The testimony is broken down into three main points - how search acts as a conduit for journalism, creating economic opportunities for publishers, and the structure of the web and its impact on publishers.
Within that last one, Mayer discusses "the atomic unit of consumption," the living story," and "keeping users engaged." Others speaking at the event include Senator Ben Cardin, Alberto Ibargüen, David Simon, Steve Coll, James Moroney, and Ariana Huffington.
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Changing Times
One of the realities that we have to face is that we live in a time period of unprecedented change both technological and societal. Newspapers and magazines have been embedded in our culture for centuries, but with the advent of the Internet the way the average person gains access to "print" news is rapidly transforming. The death of many traditional newspapers and their occasional rebirth into a digital form (the folding of the print edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in favor of a completely online version, for example) can be disquieting to some. However, as our society becomes more comfortable with gaining information via computer as opposed to paper, the shift from the old form to the new is inevitable. Journalism is not dead; it is just morphing.
Google has frequently come under fire for various reasons, yet their constant efforts at making information more accessible is to be applauded.