Google’s Think Quarterly magazine is the latest example of a company recognizing that, regardless of whatever else it is, it’s a media company.

Google, of course, is a media company on a number of levels. Its primary business helps people find stuff. Its YouTube operation is all about letting people share video. The company produces scads of media, from apps (like Google Earth) to the videos it produces to help promote and explain its various offerings. There are Google blogs, which are media, as are the doodles that frequently replace the logo on the Google.com page.

But until Think Quarterly, Google hasn’t been known as a print publisher or a producer of long-form content. The Huffington Post’s coverage notes that the company is “flexing some media muscle” with the introduction of the magazine (an embeddable version of which appears below).

Think Quarterly also represents a significant foray into the world of “braided journalism,” the term Shel Israel coined to explain the idea of professional journalists developing content on behalf of a company.

Braided journalism is one approach to becoming a media company, which is becoming more and more desirable as the number of journalistic channels that once covered companies continues to decline, along with the staffs of those that remain. If you want coverage that gets people talking about you, youd’ better do it yourself.

Google isn’t the first to unveil a discrete content channel. Intel has the Free Press. Best Buy has Best Buy On. Dell has The Power to Do More. Kodak has So Kodak.

But Think Quarterly is worth looking at because its strategy diverges from the approach Intel, Dell, Best Buy and Kodak have taken. In most instances, the standalone content channels are designed to introduce material that drives buzz and conversation. The contraction of mainstream media has led to fewer opportunities for companies to be mentioned in stories that would normally include them. Consequently, smart companies have recognized the need to produce those stories themselves. The material isn’t about Dell or Intel or Kodak. Intel has an article in the Free Press about how wineries are taking advantage of advanced technology. On Dell’s Power to Do More, there’s a piece on social entrepreneurship. The content on all these media properties include sharing functionality (tweet it, like it, comment on it, and so on).

But Google has other ideas with Think Quarterly. The primary focus is on the print publication which, based on a look at the Issuu Pro-enabled online version and the PDF, is a high-end piece of work that is distributed only to some 1,500 partners and advertisers in the UK.

According to a Google spokesman responding to a query from NewsGrange, “Like most companies we regularly communicate with our business customers via email newsletters, updates on our official blogs, and printed materials.” The high-end quarterly magazine Some 1,500 of the company’s partners and advertisers in the UK received the print version of the 68-page magazine. For them, the publication is an enhancement of that effort, “a breathing space in a busy world…a place to take time out to consider what’s happening and why it matters,” according to the editors.

Google has no plans to broaden the audience or to try selling the publication.

The site where the digital version Think Quarterly resides is dominated above the fold by the embeddable Issuu version, which offers a visual representation of a print publication enhanced by online gestures (e.g., page-turning). You have to scroll down to find the articles broken out into distinct entities you can share (via Buzz, Twitter and Facebook).

Think Quarterly embraces the braided journalism concept. Most of the contributors are not Google staffers. One is the Guardian’s editor of all things data related. Another is a professor of artifical intelligence. There’s an author and lecturer, and a former Financial Times editor.

Because the content is rock-solid—good writing, reflective thinking, interesting topics—it can also serve to inspire and invigorate a far broader audience. But even though a Google search for Think Quarterly produces more than half a million results—and Blogsearch finds well over 50,000 results—they’re virtually all talking about the book, not its contents. A Google search on “Fully Viral,” an article addressing the approaches companies are using to speak to audiences on a global scale, produces on 375 results; the Blogsearch equivalent finds only 10, only a couple of which focus on the article rather than listing it in a broader discussion of the magazine. A Blogsearch for “data superstar” Hans Rosling’s interview in the publication produced only a moderately better 27 results, many of which again were only mentioning the article in the context of the entire magazine.

None of which is meant to minimize the publication, which has taken a braided journalism approach to a defined audience. While its content could, conceivably, be better leveraged to a wider audience, Think Quarterly is a shining example of targeting non-traditional media to achieve specific goals related to a target audience.

If the idea of being a media company intrigues you, you should know that I’m beginning one of my five-week, asynchronous webinars on April 11 on just that topic. You can get more information and register here.