When some of the world’s biggest media and advertising companies talk about Google Inc., they borrow a term from the teen flick “Mean Girls.”
Google, as they see it, is a “frenemy” — an enemy who acts like a friend, or part friend, part enemy. Martin Sorrell, chairman and chief executive of advertising giant WPP Group, recently used the term. He is among the media executives who can’t decide whether Google is trying to help their business or kill it.
That’s where David Eun comes in. As vice president of content partnerships, the former NBC and Time Warner Inc. executive is Google’s ambassador to the television, movie, publishing and local-media industries.
With its digital distribution power in high demand, Google has developed some goodwill in the media business. Whereas Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and AOL are developing original video programming, Google says it won’t create content to compete with traditional media. Eun and his colleagues have struck deals to distribute MTV Networks clips on websites that run Google-brokered ads and with CBS, Universal Music Group and others to distribute video on YouTube, which Google bought in November for $1.65 billion.
