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Stumbled onto the TechCrunch video interview of Marissa Meyer discussing Google News Fast Flip and there were some very telling snippets -

 Mike Arrington: You’re experimenting a lot with news.

Marissa Meyer: We think what the news industry needs is a lot of innovation and experimentation. So seeing what works, seeing what causes user engagement, can we build a model with subscription or advertising. We’re trying to build out a sustainable business model.

Google introduced Fast Flip today and its the clearest sign yet that Google wants to take over news.

What is Google Fast Flip?

You have to check out FastFlip yourself to get what it is. Google Fast Flip is basically -

1. An online newspaper/magazine hybrid.  
2. Lets you read articles on the Google Fast Flip site itself.
3. There are banner ads next to the article.
4. It’s really, really fast browsing (It’ll remind you of Zoomii and Amazon WindowShop).
5. Remembers what you liked and adjusts according to your tastes.

Google will share revenue with Content Providers (no details on the break-up). Some publishers have already signed up -

New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, Business Week. 36+ in all.

This is Google News innovation #3 in the last 6 months

On April 20th, 2009 Google had launched Google News Timeline.

1. It’s a service that lets you gets a visual timeline of important news.  
2. You get a tiny image, a headline (which links to the article), and a snippet.  
3. You can change the view to focus in on any given week, month, year or decade
4. You have newspaper archives all the way back to
5. You can choose to search one or more of -
   

   News
   News Quotes
   News Videos
   News Photos
   Newspapers
   Magazines
   Blogs
   and many other sources

Google also divulged on September 9th that they were developing a micro payment platform that would be an option for newspapers to charge for content online.

Nieman Journalism Lab cover a document that Google sent the Newspaper Association of America that had some juicy details -

vision of a premium content ecosystem” that includes subscriptions across multiple news sites, syndication on third-party sites, accessibility to search, and various payment options, including small fees for access to individual pieces of content (known as micropayments).

They hint at a 30% cut like the Apple App Store has.

Could Google be building up a subscription model for news, just as they are building up a subscription model for orphan works and library books?

Why has Google made three big News Enhancements in just the last 6 months?

To the best of my knowledge there is no other Google product that has gotten so much focus and 3 big new feature additions in that time period (let’s not consider things like moving ads to the left and making the search box 15% bigger feature additions).

Obviously, Google sees some big opportunity.

In a world where everyone is saying news is losing value, and the news industry is going to die out, Google is making an extremely contrarian move by devoting focus to news.

What Business Model could Google have in mind for News?

There are three main possibilities -

1. They already have a proven model i.e. After it began running ads on Google News, Google noticed that the revenue is worth it. Now they want all of news.
2. They feel they’ll figure out a model eventually – they just want to take over News and worry about monetization later.  
3. Google have a particular model (subscription + micropayments) they feel would work. 

The most interesting possibility is the subscription+micropayments model. At some level Google must feel they can bring together enough news sources to make a subscription compelling.

In particular Google is probably going to push -

1. ‘Free’ level of news articles.
2. All you can eat ‘premium news buffet’ for a reasonable price like $5 a month.  
3. Micro-payment based ‘premium news article at a time’.

These can all exist together, with the free news articles subsidized by advertising.

A Twist – Should Amazon steal Google’s ideas?

Here’s a comment from Mark Cuban at the Nieman article that’s interesting -

actually google just created a roadmap for amazon.

IF they make their splits with publishers more reasonable

Amazon could create an amazing subscription environment that crosses over to books, video, news, anything and everything digital..

could be incredible

Agree on both the opportunity and the need to make splits with Publishers better.

Why are newspapers and content creators playing along?

Desperation.

That’s also the reason Google are stepping in right now – with the economy in shambles and advertising declining they feel they can dictate terms to content creators.

Additionally, if they get the news pipeline, they will be able to make terms even more favorable (for themselves) down the line.

It’s really interesting to see the parallels between what Google is doing with Books and what it’s doing with newspapers.

It’s even more interesting to wonder whether this will lead to the sort of dominance that Google has in search and video.

Closing Thoughts

Again from the Nieman article, this time its Shyam Somanadh who puts it better than I could -  

Now you understand why the publishing business is in so much trouble, they just don’t keep up with recent developments. Apple pulled off the same stunt with iTunes, sneaking up on the labels as a massive distribution point, the terms of engagement for which was determined largely by Apple itself.

So, now the newspapers want to do the same thing. Instead of fixing the fundamental problems they have in content costs – in terms of production, distribution and marketing, they are taking the easier (lazier, anyone?) route and asking Google to monetize it for them.

Schmidt must be laughing his head off at Mountain View right now.

How clueless do you have to be to replace fragmented distribution channels i.e. hundreds of store chains and retail outlets controlled by dozens of competing companies with one single distribution channel controlled by one company.

Filed under: content Tagged: | future of newspapers, google