52% of Americans would pay $2 / month for Google?

Says this eMarketer report. While this bodes well for Google I would still think it's a valid estimation only if a) there are no new 'free alternatives' b)  as long as it's a theoretical question rather than reality. I am 100% with Chris Anderson on this topic (quoted from eMarketer:) Chris Anderson, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, believes strongly that Web content will eventually all be free or close to it.... said that the “free” economy based on services such as Google’s search engine is actually worth trillions of dollars. He said the other side of the free economy is that much of it never would have made money in the first place. “Free is really near-zero marginal cost. But the reality is that a lot of it is never monetized at all,” he said. “It is free. The Web is free; what you’re paying for is peoples’ attention.”

For my my blog readers I would hope this sounds familiar...:)

Comments

[Steven Cravis]

It depends on how the survey was written; If they said something like "If all search engines had to have a fee imposed on the users, which one(s) would you be willing to pay $2 per month?" then I can see how 52% would say yes to Google.
But if it was just "Would you be willing to pay $2 per month for google?" I'm sure people would just say 'No'! :-)