Google saviour of newspapers?

How ironic is this - Google Inc. has proposed a micro-payment system that could be used by online publishers to charge for content, according a document posted Wednesday by Harvard University's Nieman Journalism Lab. Have a read.

With so many big brains and big budgets trained on cracking the content charging challenge one has to imagine that a (universal) payments solution is near but the much bigger question is not so much will consumers pay and partic young consumer, but how to get them to pay! Crack that and its in the bag! Payments is a technical challenge, the consumer aspect is much more complex and not solved in a R&D lab.