Google should be building a global paywall solution to connect them all

I've thought this forever; there should be one service with a few levels of content:

(*) free/public - encourage people to come to your site!

($) blog

($$) opinion article

($$$) solid multi-page feature

($$$$) they went out and made a bloody documentary

It's not even that it's difficult to build. YC should just build it as they are out of the Google/Facebook/Microsoft want to own everything ever written equation.

If there is one system for this you can give search engines access for free and even allow people to share articles with relevant people.

There is no paywall, you pay per article a fixed fee per $ everywhere. There is a value system built in if people think the articles were bad. Better tiers of users can have different levels they can charge. There is not need for micropayments as the wallet you top up with $10 per time even though articles cost, say, multiples 5c.

JS toolkit to bring up the "authorise" credits dialog ala Facebook friends dialog.

Bookmarking... and loads of other features would be easy to add.

It would make loads of money that.

I just wonder what the effect of having a tool like this available would be. Most websites don't use paywalls because of a combination of two factors:

a) they don't believe it to be a good business model.

b) they don't want to put the effort into implementing such a system themselves.

c) they believe paywalls hurt the open web.

If google solves b, we will see a lot more websites putting up paywalls. How is that good for the open web?

I understand the article is trying to say "if Google doesn't do it, someone else will, and if that happens the open web will die even faster". But the assumption that someone will do it and that paywalls will become the standard at some point is still just that: an assumption. I don't think an assumption is good enough for a company that values the open web (assuming Google values the open web) to sacrifice part of it because it would be better than if someone else did it.

Is this what life is, now? We make supplications to the largest corporation we think will help us? We're sliding back into feudalism.

In the Netherlands, there is startup that does allow you to buy newspaper and magazine articles with micropayments (35 eurocents for example). It's called Blendle (http://blendle.com/ ). Sadly not international yet.

To build a global paywall, you first need to have a global payment system. Google still doesn't have a way to accept digital payments in many countries.

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