Excellent article. Back in the idealised days of the web and Tim Berners-Lee's semantic web, there were some concepts a bit like this. But TBL refused to enable a commercial model to take hold as he felt web content was free. This, at least starts with the commercials up-front. However, I'm not convinced it can work as it'll end up a race to the bottom. If there are two comprehensive encyclopedia publishers which are, effectively, covering the same material, then how would their content contribute to a search result? I'm guessing the lowest priced will be picked. Then without collusion - that would be illegal, right? - the more expensive one will drop their prices to get the revenue. And so on to infinitum. I guess it might leave one news organisation in any one topic area. But two? Some thing happens - a race to the bottom. Alternatively unique valuable content goes the other way - e.g. analysis of company future revenue - and then the only person who'll get an answer is the one willing to pay the most - so you have information auctions. Imagine some legally acquired insider information that'll move a large company's share price - what is its value? Up to the market cap impact of the information.
Excellent article. Back in the idealised days of the web and Tim Berners-Lee's semantic web, there were some concepts a bit like this. But TBL refused to enable a commercial model to take hold as he felt web content was free. This, at least starts with the commercials up-front. However, I'm not convinced it can work as it'll end up a race to the bottom. If there are two comprehensive encyclopedia publishers which are, effectively, covering the same material, then how would their content contribute to a search result? I'm guessing the lowest priced will be picked. Then without collusion - that would be illegal, right? - the more expensive one will drop their prices to get the revenue. And so on to infinitum. I guess it might leave one news organisation in any one topic area. But two? Some thing happens - a race to the bottom. Alternatively unique valuable content goes the other way - e.g. analysis of company future revenue - and then the only person who'll get an answer is the one willing to pay the most - so you have information auctions. Imagine some legally acquired insider information that'll move a large company's share price - what is its value? Up to the market cap impact of the information.