The internet isn’t the most hospitable place in the world, that’s for sure. A new feature may be coming to the Chrome web browser that could make the interaction between people and websites a bit more pleasant — tipping.
As mentioned in a Chrome Platforms Status blog post, Google Chrome plans to add Web Monetization technology that the Web Platform Incubator Community Group is working on to make it easier for users to tip their favorite sites.
This new option will help sites gather more income avenues to help cover their needed expenses since they don’t rely only on subscriptions and advertising revenue. Websites can add a code to show that their site supports Web Monetization, resulting in users choosing from different payment options.
Google expressed the motivation behind this move by saying, “Web monetization offers a new revenue model for content creators and website owners, allowing them to earn from their work while users consume their content. It also facilitates voluntary user contributions, such as tips, directly rewarding the creators for the value their content provides.”
Google added the following: “Web Monetization is a web technology that enables website owners to receive micropayments from users as they interact with their content.”
The technology can work without user interaction, but users will have complete control over how much they pay and when on a per-site basis. They will need an enabled wallet, and tipping will be easy for them because “if a user has their wallet set up for a particular website, their browser will automatically start a web monetization session, enabling direct payments from the user to the website,” the post went on to say.
Google claims that “Web Monetization offers two unique features—small payments and no user interaction—users are paying/tipping for the content while they consume it. It extends the HTML element by introducing rel=”monetization.”
There is no official information on when the payment option will roll out to all Chrome users since it’s still a work in progress, and the Web Platform Incubator Community Group still needs to make it a W3C Standard.
