Why Google didn't buy the New York Times and the future of newspaper advertising

Google Almost Bought a Paper
@Green Business | Reuters:
"The real reason may be twofold. First, as Schmidt readily concedes, the targeted papers are either far too expensive or burdened with too much debt and liabilities. Second, the advertising model for general news reporting is obsolete, and Google's execs have decided instead to work with papers such as the Washington Post (the parent company of which also owns TBM) to come up with a new model that can subsidize serious general news gathering."

Here's the future of newspaper advertising. Sure it's about the customer experience but it's also about real time feedback on what is interesting to a user, by tracking what he clicked on, they selling them an ad at just the right moment of interest. Both common sense and very clever.

So what does Schmidt have in mind for the Washington Post? "It seems to me that the newspaper that I read online should remember what I read. It should allow me to go deeper into the stories. It's that kind of a discussion that we're having." In other words, the paper will store and archive a catalogue of the stories you read, steer more stories along those lines to your eyeballs, and keep you coming back for more by knowing what you're most interested in. Google already remembers what you search for, in order to more accurately match ads to your search screen. Now, it seems, Schmidt would like to apply this technique to news gathering.