Google reveals plans for micropayment platform for newspapers

Jake Widman
Friday, 11 September 2009 01:17

Your IT - Home IT

In a paper submitted to the Newspaper Association of America, Google discusses its plans for an extension of the Google Checkout shopping service to enable publishers to aggregate and charge for content. Among the features would be the ability to charge "a penny to several dollars" for content.

The paper, available for download from Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab (PDF ), opens by saying, "Google believes that an open web benefits all users and publishers. However, 'open' need not mean free."

It then goes on to describe the need for "a simple payment model that is painless for users" in order to be able to charge for online content.

The company describes its vision of a system that provides single-sign-on access to content, the ability for publishers to establish different prices for different content, and targeted advertising.

The paper points out that Google Checkout already offers single sign on and the ability to accept multiple forms of payment. It also describes the company's roadmap for Checkout: simplified merchant integration by early next year, checkout without needing an account by the end of this year, and gift card and micropayments to be supported sometime in the future.

It also suggests that publishers could set up a "preview" or "landing page" for Google to search and index, but maintain some content behind a paywall that would be so marked on Google News search results.

The company also says it will be "happy to host content and supply the bandwidth necessary to serve content."