What is Google (GOOG) thinking?
Google announced they are going to start allowing people cited in news stories to respond and have their response posted to the news story. What? How many people are they going to have to hire to make sure the “responder” is actually the person cited in the article? How much time will lapse between the news story and the time the response hits? With our lives at a story a minute pace, if the response is not posted fast, the story become old news and the service almost irrelevant. Will they be editing the posts for vulgarity or other “unwanted content” and if they are, how many more people will be needed to do that?
Will Google be held liable if a fake responder gets by them and trashes someone and creates another whole story or disastrous events unfold due to the fake response? I guess the question to be asked is, “what good for Google can come out of this?”
They already have message boards for people who like to engage in the online back and forth so there won’t be the additional page views generated to justify the tremendous costs this will entail.
Maybe they are trying to save Whole Foods (WFMI) CEO Mackey some time?