Google wouldn’t be drawn today on rumoured plans for Newspass – a reported micropayment system that could be used by publishers and news websites.
Answering questions at the World Editors Forum in Hamburg, Madhav Chinnappa, Google’s recently appointed strategic partner development manager, would only say that the search company is continuing to talk to publishers about their strategies.
There’s a myth in the industry that having paid content means you’re out of Google. [But] there’s lots of stuff there that allows control at a publisher level to allow them to do what they want.
When asked by Journalism.co.uk what accessibility publishers behind a paywall would have to Google’s tools (Chinnappa had showcased Fast Flip, Living Stories and YouTube direct), he said that publishers had to realise the levels of information required by tools such as map and the “quid pro quo” arrangement that means they get to use them for free. Google technologies, such as FastFlip, are opt in, he stressed.
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