If the Newspaper Association of America and Google were to display their relationship on Facebook, the description would read “It’s complicated.” As newspaper revenues continue to tank, the NAA has stepped up its sort of passive-aggressive lashing out at the search giant for, well, essentially being more effective at monetizing the distribution of its content than they are.
In a twist that’s probably a surprise to almost no one, the potential suitor for saving the newspapers from the bugaboo of Google might well be… Google. The company submitted a document indicating it is in the process of building a sophisticated micro payments system based on Google Checkout that would allow publishers to charge for individual pieces or bundles of content.
It’s clear that the system is still only in the very early planning stages at this point, but Google says in the document it expects the new payment structure to be “available to both Google and non-Google properties within the next year.” That sounds like the micropayment system will be fast-tracked to deliver reportedly “extremely simple” merchant integration and a solution to the major problem of transaction costs that currently inhibits micropayment plans from being implemented widely on the web.
Google Micropayments: An iTunes-like Model?
We’ll give you one guess whose playbook Google plans to borrow from on the business model side of things: Apple’s App Store (1.8 billion downloads can’t be wrong, it seems). In a brief paragraph Google discusses a similar revenue share to the iTunes model as well as its own Android Market, which both take a 30% cut of the total revenue and pay out 70% to the developer (or in this case, publisher).
Still, they make sure to include a cautionary warning about the pipe dream notion that suddenly charging for content on the web is the solution to newspapers’ woes: “We do not believe it will be the norm for accessing content.”
Check out the full document Google submitted to the NAA below. Let us know in the comments: what would it take for you to spend money for online content? What kind of payment packages might make sense in a brave new world of micropayments? Or will ducking back inside the paywall only hasten print news’s demise?
Google’s proposal to the Newspaper Association of America
If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it!
Follow us on Web
