The Cover Story, Done Right

Which is the point, of course.

Everyone guns for a popularly declared winner, that competitor who, unlike you, is being powdered for their magazine pin-up.

And our economic system -- even more than our baseball or political system -- allows for such gunning.

Read the story, it's pretty good.

After opening with a Twilight Zone-influenced take on Google's ultimate power and framing the company's current market value as more than Viacom(VIA Quote), Time Warner(TWX Quote), CBS, Publicis(PUB Quote), The New York Times(NYT Quote) -- everyone but a player to be named later -- the article gets to the point, a quite sharp one, in fact.

In short, everyone is fighting back. But Business Week is fair. They don't get into the knee jerk assumption that customers automatically hate a big business. Because while journalists often do, the same is not true of most customers, the only ones who matter to a business in the long-run. For skirting this common transgression, Business Week gets The Business Press Maven's coveted "Nod of Approval" award. There is little evidence, they note, that users give three hoots about Google's power. Where there is evidence, they add, it is the product of sour grapes or corporate politics.

All in all, a good job by Business Week fighting against the cover story prototype they only appear to be following.