Google

One of the questions I asked of Charles Goldfarb but did not publish a reply to was: When will XML become as commonly know as PDF?' He answered by saying that if I went to Google and typed in "PDF" I would get about 160,000,000 hits and that if I did the same for "XML" I would get about 41,800,000 hits - not too bad in his eyes.

If PrintAction's 50 Most Influential People in Graphic Communications considered candidates from around the world, and not just Canada, Google would be on top. The way in which this search engine organizes information dramatically affects any business involved in graphic communications or the distribution of information. This is, after all, what print is... a means by which information is collected and displayed for consumption.

I will not waste your time bringing up the novel arguments that print is tactile and, hey, who doesn't love to read a magazine or book, and so on and so forth. You are adjusted to this, probably have been for a decade. But have you adjusted to the fact that Google may be the best case study for how you should view today's communications landscape? Of course, it is impossible to generalize with so many diverse printing operations out there, but I would welcome an example from anyone who can explain away the influence that the internet and databases have on their business.

This year, you will notice a new direction with our list of Canada's 50 Most Influential People in Graphic Communications, trying to provide a perception of a marketplace that reaches beyond printing - because it does. If I can quote another previously unpublished Goldfarb excerpt from our interview: "It's tradition... printers were the ones who gave us intellectual freedom, but that has evolved and they are too wed to their presses."

What I had originally wanted to do in this space was use Google to phrase search words that appear in this issue, as an interesting example of the amount of information on the web, and maybe also provide an invalidated measure of influence. I will do that now in the remaining space, using a phrase search so the words will only be counted if they appear together. And, of course, only choosing unique words that might return some sort of credible results. Very scientific:

pierre karl peladeau: 3,420 hits, quebecor world: 22,800. mark angleson: 212. rr donnelley: 43,500. amos michelson: 1,140. xerox: 5,220,000. miles nadel: 24. open text corp: 4,680. bowne: 116,000. remi marcoux: 1,150. tony gagliano: 746. thad mcilroy: 430. schawk: 2,700. r.e. gilmore investments: 59. digital propaganda: 460. metroplitan fine printers: 734. hemlock printers: 720. rainforest: 2,430,000. forest stewardship council: 67,700. domtar: 57,800. bill gates: 2,720,000. microsoft: 102,000,000. longhorn operating system: 15,200. micrsoft longhorn: 35,900. xaml: 108,000. xsl-fo: 228,000. rfid: 2,140,000. steve jobs: 785,000. apple computer: 4,350,000. telus: 938,000. hewlett-packard: 7,670,000. motorola: 43,900,000. cicso systems: 2,760,000. pricewaterhousecoopers: 913,000. sony: 67,700,000. nortel: 2,440,000. university of toronto: 1,630,000. the beatles: 1,570,000. bruce mau: 10,700. buckminster fuller: 81,400. charles goldfarb: 5,110. sgml: 2,220,000. tim berners-lee:191,000. world wide web: 6,250,000. worldwideweb: 509,000. killer app: 366,000. dotbomb: 2,540. dot-bomb: 23,300. e-mail: 21,600,000. email: 285,000,000.

Jon Robinson - Editor

Copyright Youngblood Communications Co., Ltd. Jul 2004
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved