Google VP of Content Partnerships David Eun tries to dial down the fear factor in a media industry fearful the biggest game on the Internet will someday eat its lunch.

In a nutshell, the fear is self-pertetuated and ”ill-informed” he says. 

Eun, a former executive at Time Warner and NBC, who now strikes deals with media companies, will be at the Software & Information Industry Association conference on Thursday. IWantMedia’s Patrick Phillips caught up with him ahead of his keynote.

Some excerpts:

Eun: “The biggest misconception is that they fear Google has aspirations to become a media company, meaning that we would produce and own content that would compete against theirs. That’s a major misconception. We don’t produce or own content. In fact, we see ourselves as a platform for our partners that do.

“The second misconception is that there are some folks who are concerned that we might take their content and do things with it that are not acceptable or legal. Again, that’s not correct. We only work with content in a way that is productive and helpful to our partners.”

IWM: A daring prediction that Google would one day buy the New York Times circulated online last week. That proposition is unlikely? 

Eun: “Yes. And, frankly, the New York Times is a fantastic partner of ours. And that’s one message that is important for folks to understand.

“We have thousands of partnerships. The New York Times, for example, is a partner in the Google AdSense program. We place the ads on their Web site. They have their own ad sales force but we help them sell ads. The Times participates with us in various initiatives. The Times also has a branded channel on YouTube. A lot of people aren’t aware of that.

“We feel like we have a great relationship with the Times. We hope that they’re very successful. But what they do as a company — with journalists, news bureaus, thinking about what people want to read, producing a newspaper — that’s not what we do.

Wondering if that makes everyone in the media industry feel better. Let us know.

Eun is echoing the standard phrasing Google executives use when asked about their appetite for media.

CEO Eric Schmidt told a group of Silicon Valley reporters last May at Google headquarters that the company had no interest in acquiring a company like Dow Jones & Co, publisher of the Wall Street Journal. “We made a decision to focus primarily on user-generated content, and no on businesses where we would own the content,” Schmidt said when asked whether Google might consider bidding against Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp for Dow Jones.

(Photo: Reuters)