Google: mate or menace? That is the burning question of the week — heck, probably of the year — for ye olde media companies.

In the last few weeks an enormous swarm of activity has been coming out of the Googleplex beehive in Mountain View, California--much of it aimed squarely at preparing the search company to move its phenomenally lucrative advertising business beyond Web pages and into video, newspapers and radio.

First, of course, there was Google's deal to acquire YouTube for $1.65 billion. Media chief executives are making long whistling sounds at the thought of YouTube, an 18-month-old Web-ling, commanding that price. That was followed by two smaller but intriguing bits of news. One was the announcement of a test to put Internet ads bought through Google's advertising network into newspapers, including The New York Times. The other was that Google is bolstering its radio sales staff in what sounds like a similar but perhaps bigger effort in that medium.

Last year, Google agreed to pay as much as $1 billion for dMarc Broadcasting. It will soon use that company's technology to start a business that serves as a middleman between advertisers and broadcasters. Google's chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, has said the company plans eventually to have as many as 1,000 engineers and sales representatives working on the radio industry.

Once the YouTube deal closes, Internet video will become the next frontier for Google. In time, Mr. Schmidt has said, he would like to see Google's technology applied to television in all its digital glory.

What's at stake is pretty much everything in the $400 billion global advertising honey pot. Google's efficiency at putting text ads next to search results is what sets it apart from Yahoo, MSN and the other big boys online.
Even that astute observer of market dominance, Microsoft, has argued that until it or Yahoo or someone else can figure out how to compete with the Google advertising juggernaut, Google has too much power.

「The truth is, what Google is doing now is transferring the wealth out of the hands of rights holders into Google,」 Microsoft's chief executive, Steven A. Ballmer, told BusinessWeek recently. 「So media companies around the world are all threatened by Google.」

Well, maybe. For now, Google seems to have far fewer detractors among big media companies than it has partners. But news organizations and book publishers have filed a handful of lawsuits over the way Google distributes and presents search results and other information against which it places advertising links. Recently, Google disclosed that its online video service had been sued and accused of copyright infringement.

The World Association of Newspapers, a big umbrella group based in Paris that directly or indirectly represents 18,000 publications worldwide, is trying to organize an alliance to adopt a technology that would dictate the terms under which search engines, including Google, could use and present their copyrighted wares when their robots come trawling.

Now, before we take a shot at the aforementioned burning question — Is Google a friend of foe? — let's ponder another oft-raised and pertinent query: Is Google a media company? The last time I checked, a media company was generally defined as a business that accumulates audiences and sells access to them to marketers.

And Mr. Schmidt said recently: 「Ultimately, our goal at Google is to have the strongest advertising network and all the world's information. That's part of our mission.」 And if it is a media company, it is the world's biggest, with a market capitalization of $144 billion.

But when I spoke to David Eun, Google's vice president for content partnerships, he took umbrage with the media designation. He noted that Google did not create or own content — in his mind, part of the definition of a media company. Rather, he said, Google is a technology company: 「I would say we're a conduit connecting our users with content and advertisers.」

The elephant in the room right now is not publishing but video — and what Google proposes to do with YouTube. Among the site's millions of downloads are clips incorporating copyrighted material from movies, music videos and television shows. There is much phoning around among the moguls and with Mr. Schmidt to hash out whether the next moves involve lawsuits, licensing deals or pulling content out altogether.

Perhaps the answer to the mate-or-menace question depends on what sort of media business you're in. If you're a cable company or local TV station, Google may not yet be your ally. (But be assured that teams of engineers are working on it.)

Of course, it is not unusual for media companies to compete in some areas and cooperate in others — in fact, it's the ultimate sign that you have made the big leagues. But the lines have never been this fuzzy.

Welcome to Googlewood.