Of course nobody can tell what future holds, or he'd be a millionaire. However I stand by what I said. Just check out these snippets from the article and tell me how any of these could be good for the consumer:
Google has also been faced with demands for compensation from content providers such as newspapers, who charge the search giant makes lots of advertising revenue from referencing their material.
Is it fair use or not? If it is, then they should STFU and come up with a business model that works better for them and gets them what they want. If it's not, then take Google to court.
France and Germany are considering imposing compensation schemes on Google as the company has refused to reach any deal with media outlets.
Who do you think will pay for these "compensation schemes"? You and I. We're the only ones who have untapped money. True that we're already paying an arm and a leg for Internet connectivity and Satellite audio/video, but where there's more, greedy bastards will follow.
French President Francois Hollande warned Google on Wednesday that his government would legislate a so-called Google tax if the company doesn't reach a deal with French media companies.
Ditto above.
Of course the other side of the coin is that it's in nobody's interest for newspapers or media companies to go out of business, but enough is enough. Newspapers can definitely reach a sustainable model. It just means they'll have to change. Look at Newsweek. They just issued their last print edition. They figured they'd make out better financially. Media companies are the whores of this planet, loving to charge for both ends as someone else already put it very elegantly in this thread. For them, the more holes they have the better off they are.
I'm not saying we have all the facts of the case and obviously more information is always good. I'm just saying that a network provider who is (highly) likely already getting paid for traffic going across their wires getting paid twice CANNOT end up being good for us consumers. If Google pays for the double traffic, then the least it'll cost us is in terms of innovation coming out of Google.