Google to help Fairfax go digital
Google has used today’s opening of its new Australian headquarters by Governor General Quentin Bryce to announce plans to digitise back copies of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age and the addition of new local public transport information to Google Maps.
Around 350 staff will be based at the new Pyrmont offices. Bryce told them: ” I thank you for your outstanding contribution to Australia’s economy, culture and progress.”
To coincide with the move, Google announced that it is working with its new neighbour Fairfax Media to digitise archival copies of its newspapers, including the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, dating back more than a century. The papers will be available via Google.
Lisa Hagenmaier, group syndication manager, Fairfax Media, said: “The project to digitise and make searchable our archived content will help people to more easily experience and appreciate our journalistic heritage – letting them see newspapers exactly as they were first printed, with original headlines and images.”
” I thank you for your outstanding contribution to Australia’s economy, culture and progress.”
Except for the shifting most of your revenue off shore to avoid tax bit.
Interesting … I wonder how this fits in with the existing Newspaper digitisation program run by the National Library of Australia whose goals at http://www.nla.gov.au/ndp/selected_newspapers say that “million pages from the Sydney Morning Herald 1831-1954 will also be digitised.”
I don’t really care whether Fairfax digitises its archive, but the public transport initiative sounds exciting. Maybe they’re using Any help in the future from Google to make Sydney navigable by bus would surely be welcome.
On my last visit there, it was impossible to catch a bus using the primitive information provided at bus stops. No maps, no explanation as to where each numbered bus went; it seems you’re meant to somehow just *know* where each bus is going.
As an English-speaking visitor, it was frustrating; goodness knows how hard it much be for tourists who don’t speak the language (and can’t ask fellow passengers or the bus driver for help), or afford to take cabs instead, as I ended up doing.
“Except for the shifting most of your revenue off shore to avoid tax bit.”
Kate: name a multinational – online or not – that doesn’t use transfer pricing arrangements in Australia. My guess is if it was actually having a material impact on the Australian economy, the ATO wouldn’t be actively promoting it.
All very impressive, but why has no-one asked why the GG is now performing for corporate gigs? It seems bizarrely inappropriate for our Head of State to be plugging the branch office of an American company, however worthy its goals and people might be. Presumably, now any company that holds an event and wants some Vice-Regal presence can just ring Yarralumla and get Quentin along – for free no doubt.
Now she’s set the precedent, there’s no turning back. For the GG to refuse would be churlish, and raise questions about the precise nature of this engagement. Google has some explaining to do.
When Google finishes digitising Fairfax Media’s old archival copies of its newspapers – will Fairfax charge or ask for a subscription fee?
When is Google launching their creative advertising agency??? I know its this year sometime…that will really shake things up.
Yes, when are they launching their creative agency?