Don’t be evil (to newspapers)

Posted by Martin Stabe on 2 March 2006 at 11:11
Tags: Craigslist, Google, Online

The threat to newspaper revenues posed by Craigslist is so last month. The next online villain for publishers? Google. Jack Schofield writes in the Guardian:

This week, the excitement is about Google’s forthcoming payments system, now available to a select few (https://services.google.com/inquiry/sell). If you sell things on Google Base, Google can handle the payments - making it a potential threat to eBay and PayPal, as well as to Craigslist, and newspapers that sell classified advertising. And Amazon. And everyone.

Craigslist provides free classifieds, but not any method for its users to accept credit card payments. Of course, neither do newspaper ad sites. Analysists quoted by Red Herring say the payments mechanism combined  with the new listings service Google Base, could become a new cash cow for the search giant.
Google has had a busy week, also announching a mobile phone version of Google News.

Tags: Craigslist, Google, Online