TechCrunch reveals that Google considered and designed a feature that would let people donate money to websites to help support news publishers, bloggers and musicians. The idea was scrapped, despite these kinds of businesses and creators often struggling to earn revenue. 

Google got into the publisher funding space with Google One Pass in 2011, helping users buy subscriptions to sites before it was shut down a year later. In 2014, Google Contributor launched to let people pay a monthly fee in exchange for ad removal on partnered sites, but that program concluded around the end of 2016.