Thursday 22 April 2010

Who pays for Google traffic?

Internet providers sometimes complain that they don't get paid to send Google's traffic and that Google should foot the bill. They rarely get any sympathy on the subject, but my question is: aren't their subscribers supposed to pay for it? So in what sense are you "not being paid" for the things your customers are paying you to do?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I can't think of a good metaphor to describe the situation right now.
PPS - If I come up with one, I'll let you know.

2 comments:

Erin Marie said...

So essentially you're saying that they want to be paid twice for doing the same thing?

Kind of like if I did work for a client and was paid by both the client and my employer for the same work?

John said...

Yeah, that's pretty much their argument. They want to be paid by their subscribers and by web publishers (not necessarily just Google) for delivering the same data. And Google already pays other providers for their outbound data.