Google Says People Will Pay For Web Content

WAN 2008: People will pay for web content, says Google

Nikesh Arora, president Google for Europe, Middle East and Africa and vice president Google UK, believes that the web economy will evolve just like the print economy - and that means people will pay for content online, writes Stephen Brook.

“The business model on the web is going to be no different to the business model today,” Arora tells the audience at the World Editors Forum at the World Association of Newspapers 2008 conference.

People pay for books, they receive free information, supported by advertising, they pay for premium content, such as Bloomberg terminals. “The web will be no different….There’s going to be a spectrum,” he said.

Arora hinted that the current situation of a mass news on the web could eventually change. “There’s some degree of commoditisation on the web, when that happens, price falls.” And in such an environment, Arora says, media organisations will need “more readers and more viewers” to bring in profits.

He didn’t say it, but does this imply that there could be a great content cleanout in the future, with unprofitable news providers going to the wall?

Arora talks about the current abundance of blogs, and you get the feeling that this, too, will not last. He sees the process just like American Idol, with a small number attracting a large audience and rising to the top.

He predicts that newspapers will unbundle on the web because the platform suits specialists. The 1.3 billion people connected online in the world today will rise to perhaps 3 billion people in the next five years. This will be a great opportunity because content is easy to distribute online. But the great challenge facing newspapers is the “unbundling of the package”. While a traditional newspaper contains news, sport, arts, features, that is not the future. “Today I find different specialist places to get that information.” Newspaper will have to solve the problem of being a specialist to many on the web.

He throws out another challenge to newspaper brands who rely on their status of trust and credibility. “The challenge you have in internet world do you dilute your brand if you engage with readers?”

He then answers his own question: “This is not a generation that wants to be told, this is a generation that wants to participate in opinion forming.”

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