About two year ago, I read a blog post by someone who tried to work on a centralized payment service with german/swiss/austrian publishers. Unfortunately I can'

About two year ago, I read a blog post by someone who tried to work on a centralized payment service with german/swiss/austrian publishers. Unfortunately I can't find the link at the moment, but as I remember his conclusion was, that they were not willing to try something like this at all. Everyone wanted to have the precious user data for themselves alone. Which correlates with the experience I had working for a big publisher: News papers aren't just competitors, they are antagonists. My prediction is, if centralized content micropayment service is ever going to happen, it won't come from the publishers, but a big player with enough leverage like Amazon, Google, Apple, etc. Then the publisher will write outrage articles about how unfair and anti press freedom the cut they get is. Until they adapt silently. Maybe I'm a bit pessimistic, but I doubt that the proud traditional companies have learnt much from what happened in the music industry. Which on the bright side might be good for new media startups and different approaches to journalism.