« Bill Hunt of Back Azimuth Consulting to Keynote at SES Berlin | Main | Police Use Online Mapping Services to Help Fight Crime »
September 10, 2009
Google Plans Micropayment Platform for Publishers with Paid Content
Newspaper publishers and other media entities have made no secret about their desire to put content up behind a pay wall. The motivation behind it all is the slow death of traditional media and the loss of revenue that has come along with it.
Now, Google is planning to assist that effort by developing a micropayment platform that can help facilitate the paywall plans. It will be an extension of Google Checkout and be available for both Google and non-Google sites.
Of course, it remains to be seen if these paywall plans even work. Most newspapers had them in place when they first launched on the web. They didn't work, and the paywalls came down.
Google's smart to monetize the upcoming paywall efforts while they last. But don't be surprised if the micropayment platform ends up in the Google product graveyard if the paywall plans do indeed fail.
Posted by Nathania Johnson on September 10, 2009 11:42 AM
Comments
Even if it doesn't work out for newspapers, I bet popular blogs and other news creator sites will find a use for it. Depends on how broadly they make it useful.
Ryan3PRIME September 10, 2009 4:21 PM
The concept is anti-internet. The beauty of the internet is that it makes information available to the internet-enabled world-wide. There is a cost to becoming enabled, but once there information (versus products and services) is readily available and free in most places except China. How would you reasonably price information that is sought by so many with different sized wallets? And look what would be lost when you consider, for example, instant breaking news from third world countries only made available by Twitter.
Donna September 10, 2009 6:14 PM
Sometimes, you've just got to accept the fact that times change, industries evolve and business models must change accordingly. It seems like a desperate attempt by the newspaper publishing industry to cling onto what they once had. We'll it's gone, get over it, even if you do find an audience willing to pay for your content, it will be retweeted, scraped and rehashed to the masses for free in no time at all.
The only way it could work is to publish selected pieces of exclusive content that is worth it's weight in gold to specific and selected audiences, this in all fairness does seem to have some potential.
But as far as making money out of your standard news story, the chances of this happening are slim because journalism isn't what it used to be. The days of "the scoop" are over, the majority of our newspaper content is rehashed from the same old sources with a flavour of opinion, made to taste just the way we like it.
It will be interesting to see how this will all pan out.
Grant September 11, 2009 4:31 AM
yep, mine as well throw this one in the TC deadpool...
toddo September 15, 2009 9:17 AM
