Google has launched a few products in the past designed to help online publications or creators offer alternatives to ad-based funding. Now, another donation feature has been detailed that would have allowed users to donate small amounts to sites or people through Google.
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Late last year Google announced that one of its services, Google Contributor, would be closed and subsequently replaced by another new program. Up until last week, the service was still fully functioning for many active subscribers, but today Google pulled out the rug, closing out all active accounts.
Google powers a massive number of ads around the internet, but just like any other ads on the web, they can get just a bit annoying. Back in 2015, Google introduced Contributor, a pay-per-month program which replaced AdSense ads on any website while still pushing revenue to the site owner. Today, however, Google is closing that program, at least temporarily.
Google Contributor allows readers to pay a monthly fee to see fewer ads on the sites they visit. Ads are either outright removed or replaced with a thank you message. The service launched in 2014 and was opened up to those in US last year. Today, Contributor is getting a revamp that sets the starting monthly fee users can pay to $6.99.
The confluence of several different events – the great shift to mobile computing where there’s little screen real-estate, a spurning of display ads, to name just two – is causing content creators and consumers alike to rethink how today’s media gets funded. Sites like Patreon and Kickstarter remove the middle-man from the funding process for projects which require lots of upfront investment and see slow development times by allowing anyone to contribute any amount of money they want to a project’s development.
Google last year threw its own hat into the crowdfunding space with the soft launch of Contributor, a way through which consumers can pay a monthly recurring donation to fund the sites they visit while seeing less ads. Now anyone in the United States can actually use it starting today.
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