Google to sell access to newspaper content via Android phones?

Posted by Dawn Osakue on July 29, 2010 at 4:26 PM

Google is considering creating a future online market for digital content through its mobile operating system Android. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Google CEO Eric Schmidt highlighted this potential source of income, alongside the possibility of newspapers providing sellable content.

"This can be a powerful business, a 10-plus billion-dollar business," Schmidt said, referring to Google's new auction system combined with the Android operating system, and the fact that Android systems are currently being given out for free to device makers. "If we have a billion people using Android, you think we can't make money from that?" He asked.

The 1 billion mark is not unreasonable, considering the Android OS increases with about 160,000 new handsets daily. Once there are 1 billion users: "all it would take, is $10 per user per year."

However, as some comments on the article noticed, revenue to content providers is not a definite possibility and the size of the revenue share would be a likely point of contention. As one reader points out, Google may get the better end of the deal than content providers: "they might be paying google not you," the reader comments.

However, Amir Efrati of the WSJ undoubtedly echoes the thoughts of some newspaper publishers with his concluding remark. "A billion people paying for newspaper content? Sounds good to us."

Source: The Wall Street Journal