Wired news’ “Media Hack” column has an interesting commentary on the New York Times‘ lack of visibility in Google.

They point out the Times’ insistence on registration and their strategy for moving content into the archives as reasons why their pages fare poorly on Google searches. They also ironically point out the Long Bet between the head of NY Times Digital and Dave Winer that the NY Times will outperform blogs in search results for the top news stories in 2007 — a bet that the Times would lose catastrophically if it were called today.

I truly don’t understand the expectation that people will pay more for old things than for new — a single article from the Times archive costs 3 times more than a whole daily paper. It’s true that the daily paper is subsidized by advertising. According to Wired’s report, archive revenue is only a few percent of the annual profit reaped by Times Digital. I guess researchers may need content enough to pay for it, but most of them probably have access to a Lexis/Nexis deal where the cost is spread widely and the access is often free for the individual doing the research.