Google is in a quandary and if apposite initiatives are not adopted, the crisis may intensify. What is the crisis then? Well, Google’s association with an assortment of companies is known to all but two of its largest media customers in Australia are threatening to pull their ads from Google for the reason that it is entering the real-estate listings market. These two media customers include Fairfax Media and News Limited.
It was considered that Google’s inclusion of properties for sale on Google Maps would be hassle free (as usual like the previous ones) but the situation is taking the worst turn owing to serious dissensions. It is to be noted that both of Fairfax Media and News Limited dominate the market for properties being searched for on the Internet along with the $144 million of classified advertising revenue that goes with it.
It should be kept in mind that Google tracks down property listings from real estate aggregators and recently began enabling real estate agents to list their properties free on Google Maps. Speaking on this, Greg Ellis, an executive at News Limited, says, “It will be interesting to see how Google reconciles its practice of encouraging companies to purchase Adwords, Google Maps and DoubleClick services and then compete with those companies who buy those services.”
Fairfax Media Limited, happens to be one of Australia’s largest diversified media companies and the group’s operations include newspapers, magazines, radios and digital media operating in Australia and New Zealand. Fairfax Media was founded by the Fairfax family as John Fairfax Holdings but they lost control of the company on 11 December 1990. For the moment, the group’s Chairman is Ron Walker and the Chief Executive Officer is Brian McCarthy. As of May 2008 Fairfax Media had a market capitalization of over $5 billion.
0 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.