Here is another reason why we shouldn't use the App Store to get news. The Daily is currently available only in the US App Store, limiting access to its information not just to one platform, but also to just one country. Its almost unheard of for a newspaper to limit its web distribution to just one country (even though its technically feasible with some effort). This shows the App Store will work to fragment the world by providing information tailored to individual countries, as the ability to publish by country is a standard feature built right into iTunes distribution, originally for the sake of the music industry. In the case of news, this is a terrible outcome for the planet, and Apple should be ashamed.

Of course, a business would not use the free advertising supported GMail. Instead, you would use Google Apps for Business, which provides encrypted email with no advertising, lots of space, ability to cache email when off-line, 99.9% uptime guarantee, etc. I think it costs about $50/year per user, which is far less than the cost of staff time. Many small and large companies now do this. The major problem for an NGO might be that they have to work in some countries that don't allow certain types of data to be stored off-site in other countries, and I don't know if Google provides any way to handle this.

I don't dispute that you may never make micropayments for content, but there is plenty of objective evidence to show that you are wrong to extrapolate that others are not willing to make micropayments for news.

Anyone who buys a hardcopy daily newspaper for 0.50 so they can spend some time reading it is making a micropayment for a package of content (tens of millions do this every day). Apple's iTunes has shown there is a large market even for 0.99 songs, even though most people realize they could download something similar for free. For people who care more about the quality of their content than spending a little money, there is much to be gained by micropayments. There are currently no good online sources of news for many specialized topics, quality original research on important issues, or local news, and all of these would have a ready market.

Why have micropayments failed so far? Its just that there has been no reliable payment system such as iTunes. There needs to be a single sign-up and account for all sources, as iTunes does for music, with a fully transparent pricing system. There should be a single price for each article, such as 5 cents, similar to 0.99 music, so that a user does not face the cognitive overhead of deciding cost/benefit for each thing they read. Note that 5 cents is 10 to 100 times higher than what advertising brings in and would be enough to support professional news organizations. In addition, its important that there should be a maximum daily charge of maybe $1, so that users understand their costs will be limited without having to count their reading. Under these conditions, I believe there would be a massive worldwide market for content. Time will tell, but what is missing is the reliable central payment body, similar to iTunes for music, that can enforce a single low price and enforce minimum quality to avoid one content provider from killing the system for everyone else by overcharging.