Google to charge for news content?
Jinfo Blog

25th June 2010

By Penny Crossland

Item

Rumours have been spreading in the information and media blogosphere regarding plans by Google to launch a payment system, which, if implemented, would mark the beginning of a new business model for the search engine, and a possible lifeline for struggling news publishers. A report published in the Italian newspaper ‘La Repubblica’ (http://digbig.com/5bbtyk ), as yet unconfirmed by Google, states that publishers have been asked to participate in a trial that would test micro payments as well as longer-term subscriptions. In effect, Google is planning an integrated payment system, which will enable publishers to charge readers for news content. This news comes at an interesting time: for some time now, Google has been at loggerheads with news publishers and NewsCorp, in particular over the provision of access to its newspapers (see http://www.vivavip.com/go/e24414 and http://www.vivavip.com/go/e27799 for LiveWire comments on the subject), being accused of resembling “tech tapeworms in the intestines of the internet”. This month, the Murdoch newspapers went behind a paywall (see http://www.vivavip.com/go/e28452 for details) to protect search engines from providing free access to their news content. Other major newspapers, such as the NY Times will follow suit shortly (see http://www.vivavip.com/go/e27802). Interestingly, while most writers commentating earlier in the year on the introduction of paywalls doubted whether these would succeed, there now seems to be a trend by online users towards a gradual acceptance of some kind of payment system for news content. (See the posting on a recent OECD report for more: http://www.vivavip.com/go/e29527. To be fair, Google has tried to find solutions that would help publishers. Its First Click free programme (http://www.vivavip.com/go/e27361) was intended as a halfway house, giving online users some free access before having to subscribe to sites if they wanted to read more than five articles per day. This is obviously not enough of a solution for news publisher and Google too must be thinking that the current system is not working. According to a report in the Guardian (http://digbig.com/5bbtym), the Newspass programme will allow publishers to choose what type of payment they want to accept. Online users will see a payment icon next to search results from participating publishers and will be able to purchase articles directly via Google. If Newspass is implemented it should provide a welcome relief to publishers. However, no doubt there will be endless discussions about the implications of this on the quality of the remaining free sources on the web. Will what we call the ‘open web’ need to be re-defined?

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