The Realities of Online Publishing

Joshua Schnell of Macgasm, discussing his struggle with Google Ad revenue falling off after a server move:

After four months of trying to wrap my head around the case of the missing ad-revenue I realized something, I probably rely more on Google than I do Apple for my daily business. Sure, Apple provides me with the news we cover on Macgasm, but Google makes the coverage possible with Google Reader. Our email … hosted at Google. Our analytics … provided by Google. Our ad-revnue … primarily courtesy of Google. My main IM client of choice for the website … Google Talk. Our number one source of traffic … Google.

[…]

I may have built a house on the Internet, but it’s certainly Google’s world I’m living in. I would be lying if I didn’t say I was concerned about the future of publishing online.

I’ve felt for sometime that online journalism can’t be supported just by advertisements.¹

Niche journalism probably feels this squeeze more than newspapers who have an online presence, since the pool of readers and advertisers is smaller. With Google controlling so much of the online advertising world, this problem isn’t going to get much better for sites like Macgasm any time soon, I fear.