Social word-of-mouth networker Andy Sernovitz, publisher of the ‘Damn! I Wish I Had Thought Of That’ newsletter, makes a modest but important observation in about the future of print in today’s Huffington Post. Blogs are real — and so is Google. It’s something we always knew — but now confirmed it in a unique way.
The Wall Street Journal is now quoting blogs as a primary news source. Google’s blog in particular. Sernovitz notes that Google “neglected” to send out a press release or call any reports with this news — they just posted an article to their blog announcing a new operating system to challenge Windows.
So today, we’re announcing…the Google Chrome Operating System…an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010.
Change is all around us everyday. So much of it that it’s often hard to know when change is real. This, however, is one of them.
The WSJ sourcing Google’s blog as a primary source isn’t a breakthrough. But the fact that Google made a major announcement which got major exposure without going the traditional PR route is, well, huge. As Lee Iacoca once said, “this changes everything.” When Iaccoca said it, he was only talking about one industry. In time, this announcement may prove significant to both the IT and communications businesses.