Paul Andrews

It's becoming more and more apparent that all roads to a pay-for-content system on the Web run through Google. It may even be appropriate to call Google the Apple of Web content, and in fact an effective Google transaction system could subsume iTunes, because it will involve all forms of content, not just written. Google will have to work in tandem with other major players, notably Amazon. But Google holds the keys to the kingdom.

I've written extensively on my support for a penny a click. For any piece of content, from a news flash to a YouTube video to a Jon Stewart clip. Most people writing about micropayments think in terms of different prices for different things. That's too complicated. It makes users think too hard about whether they want to pay. The success of iTunes lies largely in its no-brainer approach. You know the price and it doesn't get it the way if you want the song. (Variable pricing is coming to iTunes, which can get away with it because the initial hurdle to pay-to-play has been surmounted in its case.)

People also tend to think of micropayments in terms of written content. Why? A good YouTube video deserves payment just as much as a thoughtful blog post.

Finally, people seem to feel that even with a pay-to-click system in place, 99 percent of content would still be free. I don't see why: If the good stuff gets paid for, it will naturally elbow out all the useless background noise of the Web. When people discover Alice in Videoland, how many buy the songs at the bottom of the iTunes queue? You start with the most popular and work your way down. I doubt Apple will disclose what percentage of its revenue comes from, say, the top 10 rated songs in any categorization, but I bet it's huge.

At least we're making some progress in reviving the whole notion of paying for content. Finally we're getting past the "nobody will pay to click" mentality that has been disproven over and over. Keep it simple, stupid, and people will embrace it faster than you think.

Google and its inscrutable CEO, Eric Schmidt, has been studiously noncommittal on the subject of paid content — methinks they doth protest too much. Google more than anyone knows the huge profit upside here. If pay-to-click is coming to the Web, and it really has to at this point, then Google understands it will benefit hugely from even a tiny micro-slice of any transaction mechanism. Indeed, it boggles the mind how much money would be involved in an AdSense type revenue stream for Web content.

Google's role would start with the Web searches that have become as second-nature to the Web as flipping channels on a TV. The highest-ranked searches (Google determines that today, of course) would be tagged for pay-to-click. Metadata, either a balloon or pop-up window (similar to Netflix's stellar browse system), would display a sentence or two related to the full content of the selected piece.

Metadata would not even be needed in most cases, because a penny is so small a commitment. In most cases, we do a search looking for something we already know we want. Often it's been referred to us by a trusted source, either in a blog link or by email or simply word of mouth. We're eager to see it.

And Google's celebrated intuitive algorithms also are a great selective mechanism. The top-ranked results in any search are a pretty good bet to get us what we want.

But for general research purposes, metadata would be useful, as long as it didn't get in the way of the viewer. (WordPress' SNAP feature is like this, just a flicker too slow to be unnoticeable.)

Once a viewer clicked on a piece of content, Google's back end would kick in, distributing slices of the penny (or whatever amount) to appropriate recipients, including the author's account, the credit card or PayPal sponsor of the account, and any other relevant party. Again, these tiny amounts seem unimpressive by themselves, but quickly add up to real money with the critical mass of the Web.

Ted Nelson's Xanadu system takes the process several steps further, automatically distributing slices to authors whose work might be cited, linked, quoted or otherwise derivatively used in the clicked-on content. It doesn't need to be that complicated. Anyone clicking on a link will simply pay another penny to view the sourced or referenced content.

Here's where Google's real trench work needs to happen. Whoever hosts or otherwise supports the derived content will need to participate in a clearinghouse. Amazon, The New York Times, YouTube (already owned by Google), WordPress and other big players will need to be in on the game. Even Microsoft. Interestingly, while rereading Dan Gillmor's seminal We The Media (O'Reilly, 2004) recently I ran across a reference to a Microsoft content prioritization scheme called NewsJunkie. It seems to have fallen off the face of the earth, but it would mesh well with any Web payment scenario.

As it stands now, Google is the hub of any pay-to-click wheel. Google knows this, and understands that if it doesn't move, Yahoo! or Microsoft or Amazon or Apple or someone else will, and Google will have missed an enormous inflection point of Web evolution. Somewhere in Mountain View there's a team beavering away on this.

I can already hear cries of "Monopoly!" from the blogosphere. They are quite legitimate. Google already invades too much of our existence and controls too much of what we see and do on the Web.

But Google so far has not thrown its weight around, or bullied its partners and competitors, in nearly the way IBM and Xerox and Standard Oil and, most recently, Microsoft did during their monopolistic heydays. Google may well be a monopoly. As long as it doesn't behave like one, I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.

Admittedly, there isn't much choice. If you believe that we need a Steve Jobs and an Apple iTunes to make paid Web content work, you have to conclude that the discussion starts with Google.

Online journalist and blogger Paul Andrews, co-author of "Gates," wrote about technology for The Seattle Times and other publications beginning in the early 1980s. Also see his previous TechFlash post on Microsoft's planned retail stores.