Google shadow over new media groups

Google is developing technology that could position it to compete with a new breed of digital media companies that are generating story ideas for the Internet by mining online search data for under-covered topics.

These new digital companies hope to produce content more cheaply than traditional media operations by using statistical analysis to identify topics of interest to consumers and then hiring freelancers to produce relevant stories or videos. However, Google obtained a patent this year for a system that would help it identify "inadequate content" on the Internet, based on comparisons of what people search for and what they find. The filing said data from the Google system could be sold to online publishers or given away for free, which could complicate the plans of companies such as Demand Media, Associated Content and AOL that are developing systems to generate ideas for Internet content using software algorithms.