• The New York Times, Monday, November 13, 2006 11:45 AM

News reports continue to focus on that burning question facing traditional, time-stuck media companies as Google forages ahead in its secret quest for media domination: Is it friend or foe? To be sure, it's a tiresome question that's gotten a ton of media play.

First, for anyone who closely follows this field from the outside, Google is a media company, despite its claims to the contrary. To the world, the search giant has to bill itself as a technology and Web services provider and conduit to media companies. If it didn't, it wouldn't have any media partners at all.

But Google's claim that it's not in the media business appears a little ridiculous when you consider its recent moves into print, radio and online video. The return for the company in these areas, which approaches $3 billion collectively, will naturally come from advertising. And TV is next, says Eric Schmidt, the company's CEO. Friend, indeed.

And it's ambitions are huge, writes Richard Siklos: "What's at stake is pretty much everything in the $400 billion global advertising honey pot," Google wants to license the world's content and sell ads over it in a more efficient, automated way." Unless Yahoo or another company can figure out how to compete, Google has all the power.

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