Publishing tycoon Rupert Murdoch has previously stated that his company will begin charging for access to the content on all of its websites. Currently the only publication that charges for content in Murdoch's empire is the Wall Street Journal.

Shortly after Murdoch made the decree that all of News Corps. websites would charge for access to content, Google CEO Eric Schmidt scoffed at the plan and said that newspapers don’t want to "piss off" readers. Schmidt has again scoffed at Murdoch's plan to charge for online content.

Schmidt told attendees at a meeting of a group of British broadcasting executives that it would be very hard to charge for content online because the same content is available free.

Reuters quotes Schmidt saying, "In general these models have not worked for general public consumption because there are enough free sources that the marginal value of paying is not justified based on the incremental value of quantity. So my guess is for niche and specialist markets ... it will be possible to do it but I think it is unlikely that you will be able to do it for all news."

Schmidt is basically saying that the Wall Street Journal being successful with charging for content online is the exception, not the rule.

Murdoch has still not rolled out his pay for content scheme to any of the other websites in his publishing empire; perhaps he knows deep down that wishing readers would pay and getting them to do so are two very different things.