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Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

If google actually creates a good system for paying news media through e.g. microtransactions or group subscriptions which is ONLY there to improve the internet and doesn't benefit google (Get more traffic, get more user data, ...) then this is a good thing. It would be like the google/apple teaming up on the BT proximity tracking apis in android and iOS.

If google gets any cut in such a system, or even gets a slight benefit, or even knows who has what subscriptions and uses that information - then I'm completely against it. But if they spend their own money developing platforms that they then have no control over and no benefit from - good! Otherwise - bad!

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That might be a hard sell to their shareholders, spending a lot while gaining nothing, maybe even harming existing products.

Besides, if they foot the bill for finding out how such a micropayment system that actually works would look like, I guess it might still be a net win for everyone, because that would drastically lower the bar of entrance for competitors. Figuring that out would probably require very expensive iterations.

> If google actually creates a good system for paying news media through e.g. microtransactions...

They had something close to this with Google Contributor:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor

You add a few dollars to your online account, nominate which participating sites you want it to work with, and you would get an ad-free / paywall-free experience on those sites. The sites would determine the price per page - some only charged 1c, while some smaller blogs charged 5c. Some large Australian newspapers signed up, and apparently Mashable and The Onion were part of it at launch.

Ultimately every website I followed pulled out of the program. It seems that advertising revenue earns more for newspapers than anyone is prepared to pay for news. I never even used up the $5 I put into my Google Contributor account.

The Contributor program lets people decide what "news" to support. Now Google is going to pick which favored news outlets it is going to financially support.

Isn't that the idea of Flattr?

Pretty much, except I don't think Flattr allowed content creators to set their own price & put stuff behind a paywall. Flattr is more of a donation / Patreon model. Contributor instead set an upfront price on accessing each article.

(I could be wrong, it's years since I last used Flattr. I'm surprised but glad to see they're still around.)

Google is corporation, of course it's for their benefit.

Google is paying news organizations to stop chastising them for hurting their revenues. While they're at it, also coup some good PR.

Does a reader want free* paywalled news? You have to use google. Does a news org want a pie of the Google free* news budget? You have to partner with Google.

Solidifies even more Google position as an immovable object. One less reason not to use Google Search/News. One less reason for not relying on Google for revenues.

One less reason for everyone to question Google market position and do anything about it.

> Google is corporation, of course it's for their benefit.

I'm thinking a diverse web that isn't controlled by another big actor might be enough of a long term benefit to google.

Some times I get the feeling that these huge actors don't necessarily silo everything because they necessarily think it's a good idea, but because if they don't someone else will and that's a bad thing.

If there's one lesson to be drawn from the decade of Google just past, it's that they do not see a diverse web uncontrolled by large actors as beneficial to them. They want the web controlled by a big actor which is them.

"We have to silo things so no one else will" is an excuse for bad behavior, and a risible one at that. If Google wanted a web that couldn't be siloed, they have the money and brains to build that. They choose to build silos instead.

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