Google announced today that they will be partnering with four states to help those states index their vast collection of online databases and resources. The goal here is that Google will be a will to help states get their permission out to people that need it better and more efficiently. That makes perfect sense because that's basically what Google does.
Google is not being charged in the money for the service and the states not paying any money for the service. However Google will make a fortune off of the information. Google puts advertising to all of their search results and having essentially a monopoly over her the index of the state data will give them an entire section of the Web that no other search engine can access. They will be the only company that can host advertising there. It would be similar to a company going in and buying up the state capital and placing ads inside the state capital.
They would then lease these ad placements to any company that wanted to advertise in the state capital. That's basically what's going to happen online. Now I'm sure Google will help people find that information easier and faster, but should Google profit off of the states content? Should Google offer the states have to revenue from that advertising that they are able to place with their content?
Google earns billions of dollars from this type of advertising. They aren't likely to earn billions from the four states in question here, however they probably will earn a good chunk of money. In some ways this is similar to a state offering up a logging company the right to go harvest a number of trees without having to pay the state any money for it. One of the differences is that this is a renewable resource and there are an unlimited number of trees.
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