I Want Media.com’s Patrick Phillips interviewed The New Yorker‘s media columnist Ken Auletta on his just published book, Google: The End of the World as We Know It.

CEO Eric Schmidt told you that Google is poised to become the first $100 billion media company. So it’s official: Google now defines itself as a “media company”?

Auletta: Yes, and the media companies that wail about Google’s power attest to this as well.

Won’t such a definition offend Google’s content partners in traditional media?

Auletta: Yes, that’s the delicate balancing act most companies must make in the new world. The word “frenemy” was invented to describe companies that are both collaborators and competitors.

Google is a media company in terms of generating advertising revenues, not producing content. Is there any indication that Google could enter content production?

Auletta: Google co-founder Larry Page and CEO Eric Schmidt told me that they had discussed buying the New York Times, but in the end decided that if they succeeded it would sabotage their identity as a neutral search engine. The reason they are interested in preserving the New York Times is that Google’s search engine depends on good information, and the Times is the world’s best newspaper.

On the other hand, Google already produces content. It has made production deals to create content for YouTube. It established Knol, its effort to compete with Wikipedia. The tensions between remaining the Switzerland of search and pushing its own content will only grow.

Battle lines, drawn? A very interesting interview, you can read the whole thing here. And on Nov 8, you can catch Ken with New Yorker editor David Remnick as they discuss the book and revelation’s contained within. Use code “KEN” at checkout to receive a 50% discount on your ticket price. A book signing will follow the event.

Let’s watch the Epic 2015 and DARPA IXo Control Grid videos again just for haha’s.

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