"San Jose Mercury News: No One Reads Us Any More, So Let's Start Charging."

There's a lot of debate going on at present especially in the newspaper business about Google in particular, and bloggers in general, and whether they are "stealing" content. Newspapers are struggling, ad revenue is down, and they cannot survive as they are. But charging for content when they can't get enough visitors to read it for free seems perverse. There is an old marketing ploy about putting the price of a slow-selling product *up* and transforming it into a premium product that might then sell well. It's just that in this case news is a basic commodity which lots of other sites are also supplying. What makes this move particularly bone-headed is that Google are not the problem, they are driving traffic to the newspaper site.

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Mark has a long history of working with computers and the Internet, he has delivered presentations and courses on many topics over the years. His opinion is actively sought and highly valued.

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