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Right now, publishers have a major bone to pick with Google, as the company is both messing up its search algorithm and launching AI overviews. However, the company is working on a means of monetization that might mean good news for small-time creators and publishers. Google could bake micro-payments into Chrome.
Micro-payments in Google Chrome?
As it stands, many of the websites you see on Google are supported by ad revenue. So, the more people who visit the sites, the more money that they and Google get. This is how things have been going for years, but the company is shaking things up. AI Overviews threaten to put thousands of sites out of business because they allow users to bypass visiting websites and get the answers that they want. The AI-powered search engines like Perplexity don’t really help the case that much more, even while posting links to sources.
Well, Google might have another method of distributing the wealth to websites. According to a new report, Google is working on a system that will let people pay sites directly to see their content when on Chrome. Right now, this is still in the very early stages, so there’s no telling if the company will actually implement it.
From the way it sounds, there will be a native way for site owners to put their content behind a paywall. It will be a more direct way of supporting the site rather than ad revenue. This method might not be limited to just publications. Websites that host other forms of user-created content might be able to benefit from it as well.
When implemented, the users will use the HTML code rel=”monetization”. When they do this, they should be able to monetize their content.
This method of monetization could be beneficial to site owners because they will be able to bypass fees. Also, depending on how many people choose to support the site, they might be able to earn more money than with ad revenue.
The technical documentation will show you more information about the inner workings of this feature. We don’t know if Google will follow through with this or not. However, if it does, we should expect some changes.
We also expect some opposition. For example, for this to work, what if a person wants to support a site on a different browser? That’s something that the company will need to consider.