Apple Online Store“‘Don’t charge for your wares, and experiment, experiment, experiment.’ Thus Google’s advice to newspapers, paraphrasing,” Dan Ramsden writes for Seeking Alpha. “Of course, when your dozens of no-charge experiments – for example, Wave and Buzz – are underpinned by a cash engine that is a near monopoly which never slows, it is possible to dole out such advice with a straight face.”

“At least for the near term, this self-serving position by Google is the right thing for Google… But in the longer term, newspapers will not survive,” Ramsden writes. “In the long term, Google’s advice is bad for Google as well, because a healthy newspaper segment could be a good source of commerce, and Google’s advice would cause this segment to disintegrate.”

“Newspapers should consider (I suspect they already have) this statistic provided by Business Insider as its ‘Stat of the Day’ last evening. No less than 63% of mobile web consumption is performed on Apple’s iPhone,” Ramsden writes. “This statistic is particularly noteworthy considering that the iPhone’s share of the smartphone market is only 25%, to Blackberry’ 42%.”

MacDailyNews Take: Only 25%? In respect to RIM’s current numbers, certainly the word “only” could be used (and we understand why Ramsden, an admitted BlackBerry sufferer, did), but it implies, wrongly, a smallness that just does not reflect reality. Microsoft, Palm, and and a very long list of others would love to have “only” 25% share of the smartphone market (which Apple has accomplished in only a few years) that consists of a disparate bunch of devices lumped together regardless of capabilities and user experience; Apple’s iPhone 3G/3GS vs. RIM’s BlackBerry (any model) being a perfect example of the looseness of the “smartphone” definition.

Ramsden continues, “Newspaper and magazine owners, who are struggling to redefine their business models for a new online and mobile environment, would probably be well served to align themselves with the platform that can offer a revenue model, and a mobile marketplace, and leave the experimentation and iteration stuff to young entrepreneurs and startups that do not yet have a franchise to protect.”

“Much has been said about the iPad and its ability to ‘save traditional media,’” Ramsden writes. “In the long term, it will be in traditional media’s interest to support a successful iPad. Style, design, quality control, are all characteristics that will do much more to facilitate the popularity of paid content than one more colorful website that may or may not show up at the top of Google’s search results.”

Full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "iWill" for the heads up.]