"Google Devalues Everything It Touches" - Wall Street Journal Chief
siliconvalleywatcher.com
siliconvalleywatcher.com
Problem #2, it's a free website that requires registration to view add supported content without providing a reason to register.
Problem #3, high cost of content. It might not cost much to show a page but creating it costs more than user or software generated sites.
Solution: Either drop the registration or add some social aspect that uses the registration. If someone stumbles on a NYT article from Google and needs to register to view other pages there is a problem.
PS: Advertising is the only form of micro payments of the web deal with it or develop something new.
The main thing is get engagement first; ask for the registration later.
The main business of newspapers was always just getting the info from A to B. I had a reporter friend who used to compare his job to working on the docks. Some fire would break out, and he'd be sent to "unload" the news from the fire department and the usual shocked-and-stunned families and the neighbors, and boom, file his story. And this was when newspapers were actually good.
By the 1990s, newspapers had virtually no useful content left. It was just a habit for some readers, and a local monopoly for certain forms of advertising. Newspapers had been consolidated to the point where local news was dreadful to non-existent, and most of the paper was filled with bland wire stories and syndicated columnists of no particular merit. The one thing you really needed the newspaper for was classified ads, and the internet killed that pretty quickly.
People are willing to pay more for actually rare information. Nouriel Roubini, the economist, runs a paid newsletter to people who want to hear his contrarian views.
Furthermore, there's a huge gap in local news these days. Local government, schools -- all this stuff that really matters to people has no medium any more.
It came in handy a while back when I woke up to find out that a street was closed due to emergency water line maintenance. Sure it's just a little thing, but it saved me five minutes of finding out the hard way during my commute.
In Minneapolis & St. Paul, Minnesota, neighborhood and specialty newspapers are still prevalent, numerous, and of good quality. A real joy to read compared with the neighborhood papers of New York City. But, then, I guess the Twin Cities has a culture of indie publishing.
Joel Spolsky described it thus: Smart companies try to commoditize their products' complements.
The real danger is that Google is becoming the sole market maker for advertising, which means they can extract almost all value from the transactions.