You've got to hand it to Google, when it comes to business they think small.

No really, thinking big is sooooo 20th Century. If you are really cool, like Google continue to claim to be, then having a punt on micro-payments is the trendy thing to be doing.

Seriously, this is quite an interesting idea and while it isn't altogether new it is being applied in rather a nice way by Google at a most appropriate moment.

Take, for example, a newspaper. Most newspapers have an online edition but most have any number of problems in doing so. By far the biggest problem is that the online edition cannibalises the readership for their print edition and this lowers the value proposition for the advertiser so print revenue falls. While doing so the online edition doesn't replace that lost print revenue with the same amount of online advertising revenue so it becomes bad for business. However, the publisher cannot afford to pull out of the Internet as that will also adversely affect the business. The industry has been toying with the online business model for a long time and most have realised that charging for content is the only real answer. Take, for example, the Wall Street Journal which is one of the few newspapers online to make money and also one of the few that actually charge a subscription.

As Rupert Murdoch, the head of News Corp (owner of the WSJ), would have it:

"The inchoate days of the Internet will soon be over."

Which is a line he came up with when announcing that content will soon be charged for by all of the newspapers in the News Corp group. These include such names as "The Times" and the "Sun" in the UK, seemingly all of the Australasian newspapers as well as the "Wall Street Journal" and the "New York Post" so this is not a trivial announcement. This will almost certainly mean most, if not all, of the non-state funded news channels will follow suit and this is where Google and their penny ante business thinking comes in.

What Google want to do is act as an intermediary charging for content as people read it. This gives the online reader unlimited access to a whole range of newspapers without having to subscribe to each one for the privilege. Reading one article may not cost much at all, hence the micropayment moniker,  but Google would track the articles you have read and bill you at intervals passing the monies back to the various publications and keeping a cut for itself.

There is a lot to be said for this approach  as it gives the reader the same scope they had before charging while offering publishing houses a revenue stream without having to set up a billing process. The application of such a business model in other spheres of content provision is obvious.