google "local" grows new head

There is some significance in the following story, particularly for those that have been following my "hunch" of a behind the scenes NETWORK of publisher/media Co's forming and their POSSIBLE ultimate presentation of both their archived & current print content, and on a global scale, at that.

Google Local Grows New Head

Jason Miller By Jason Lee Miller

Google snatched up a newspaper/online classifieds veteran right from the jaws of major newspaper companies to head up Google Local. Formerly of Classified Ventures' Homescape.com, Sam Sebastian is described as a new avenue to print advertising for Google.

The news comes this way from a weblog post by Peter Krasilovsky of Krasilovsky Consulting.

Though many may be unfamiliar with Classified Ventures, or even real estate vertical Homescape.com, they most likely will have heard of sister sites like Apartments.com and Cars.com, as well as the six-member media partnership that owns Classified Ventures -- Tribune, Knight Ridder, Gannett, McClatchy, Belo, and the Washington Post Co.

Classified Ventures runs the online real estate sections of over 125 newspapers. Sebastian has a long history in bridging the print/online gap for Homescape.com through his involvement in marketing the site and building online real estate sections newspaper advertisers.

Indeed, sister-site Apartments.com announced just last week the launch of a new print advertising campaign entitled "More Under One Roof" as part of a larger media convergence effort.

"Apartments.com and our newspaper affiliates maximize exposure of our listings to renters through print newspaper ads and online ad promotion," said Michael Ricciardelli, Vice President of Marketing and Media Sales at Apartments.com. Ricciardelli also stated that the newspaper affiliates reached some 25 million households through Sunday circulation.

Krasilovsky theorizes that choosing Sebastian to head Google Local would be good for Google, but bad for Classified Ventures.

"Sebastian might build bridges to newspapers," writes Krasilovsky. "But he also poses something of a threat, since he conceivably knows all the details of classified initiatives of all the Classified Ventures' newspaper owners."

Of course, the "bridge building" may refer to a Sam Sebastian (his) "understanding" of progress of any network formation to date and the importance of Google retaining their 'status quo' relating to it's search results, as have been demonstrated in previous posts. Google could not only retain any existing relationships (relating to web search) on all (network) partner sites, but could very well become the preferred Portal globally, for any (partners), currently, elsewhere. Google's Adsense programme is the most successful to date, no doubt. But the "threat" SAM is said to pose, could see MSN stepping into Google's shoes very quickly.

From a Looksmart (shareholders) point of view, we need to hear some "NEWS" in the next 3 or, 4 weeks, (as has been said, an announcement is to be made) that would or, could even see some of those 187 affiliates of News Corp mentioned in this articles here (along with it's own properties), join the "party".

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/topnews/wpn-60-20060414FoxAffiliatesSharingWebRevenue.html

But, only some thoughts of mine, that's all. And worth what you have paid for them, probably?

:)

LC