Would you pay $.01 or $.05 to read this blog post?

Google’s thinking you might.  After years of speculation that Google is going to get into the micropayments business, it finally appears that the search giant may extend its Google Checkout feature to take small payments for content.  This may be a dream come true for publishers, who are seeing print subscriptions plummet and advertising get scaled back.

I don’t see micropayments as the saving grace of all publishers.  You’re still going to see a tremendous number of newspapers, magazines, and even media websites closing in the coming years, as the public continues to change its media consumption habits and these media outlets simply can’t make enough money.  However, a Google micropayment system might help the more successful publishers prop up their ad revenues with another source of cash.  And because of Google’s firm grasp on a constantly increasing number of web applications, the search giant might have the best chance to push a true micropayment standard into the market.  The concept of micropayments isn’t new – it’s been kicked around since the dot-com boom of the late 1990s.  But no company has succeeded at this game…yet.

If micropayments catch on with published content like news articles, perhaps some new models might crop up in the online music business too.  Real-time streaming of music has really come into its own in the past couple years, with Pandora, MySpace Music, Fizy, and dozens of other sites that give people access to their favorite tunes.  A universal micropayment platform could be a huge win for many music sites too.

Photo by mil8