Slashdot Mirror
Google Reinvents Micropayments — As Surveywall
Hugh Pickens writes "Frédéric Filloux writes that eighteen months ago — under non disclosure — Google showed publishers a new transaction system for inexpensive products such as newspaper articles. It works like this: to gain access to a web site, the user is asked to participate to a short consumer research session: a single question or a set of images leading to a quick choice. It can be anything: pure market research for a packaging or product feature, surveying a specific behavior, evaluating a service, intention, expectation, you name it. Google's size puts it in a unique position to probe millions of people in a short period of time and the more Google gains in reliability, accuracy, and granularity (i.e. ability to probe a segment of blue collar-pet owners in Michigan or urbanite coffee-drinkers in London), the bigger it gets and the better it performs cutting market research costs 90% compared to traditional surveys. Companies will pay $150 for 1500 responses drawn from the general U.S. internet population. But what's in it for users? A young audience will be more inclined to accept such a surveywall because they always resist any form of payment for digital information, regardless of quality, usefulness, or relevance. Free is the norm. Or its illusion. This way users make micropayments, but with attention and data instead of cash. 'Young people have already demonstrated their willingness to give up their privacy in exchange for free services such as Facebook — they have yet to realize they paid the hard price,' writes Filloux. 'Economically, having one survey popping up from time to time — for instance when the user reconnects to a site — makes sense. Viewed from a spreadsheet, it could yield more money than the cheap ads currently in use.'"
For what it's worth (and maybe a warning to others):
1) Buy "World of Goo" using my PC (!) for my shiny new tablet and set up a "google wallet",
2) 5 or 10 minutes later "congratulations, you've bought 5000 Happy Stars" for €8.99 (non-refundable), apparently my 5 year old kid clicked on something while playing "Sheeps & Clouds"
3) Attempt to fight this, what I consider to be a legalized scam, ended with nothing
In other words, if you set up google wallet 3rd party apps on Android OS can make payments without asking you for password or anything. It is amazing that it works that way since Apple had problem when remembering password for 15 mins. Google effectively "remembers" it forever, without even asking you once.