Old news
With 2011 set to be the year in which the tablet market becomes competitive, the WSJ is citing a couple of anonymous sources for the news that Google is developing an e-newsstand.
Newspaper and magazine publishers, which have seen their circulations and ad revenues decimated by the Internet, are desperate for a digital channel that replicates some of the cosy certainties of the dead-tree era. Whether consumers are as nostalgic, however, remains debatable.
A bunch of tablet magazines have already been launched, but their circulations aren't exactly setting the world on fire. And the problem for newspapers, of course, is that they rarely offer stories you can't get for free already somewhere on the web. So the whole premise of an e-newsstand, which replicates the newsstand experience electronically, is questionable.
The story suggests the new service will offer newspaper and magazine apps. If that's the case it would appear to be merely a sub-set of the Android Market, rather than anything genuinely new. There is a place for news apps; we use the Telegraph one on Android and it's a great way of catching up on the, not so new, news. But we wouldn't pay for it.
The WSJ piece - which tellingly is not behind a pay-wall - reckons that to lure publishers away from Apple's iTunes media store, Google will take a smaller cut of any sales and, critically, is mulling over sharing personal information about app-buyers in order to help the media with their targeted advertising.
While this is probably the only meaningful way Google can help media to improve their digital lot, it's contentious for a couple of reasons. Firstly it's far from proven that people are any more likely to pay for content or subscribe to media on mobile devices than they are on the regular Internet.
Secondly Google will probably only be able to get meaningful amounts of user information to its media customers unless it makes such a thing opt-in as a default. But this sort of thing would be very contentious, especially as Google already has so much personal information on its servers, as people don't like their data being shared to third parties without their express permission.
