Last month (as reported here), Rupert Murdoch said he was going to restrict Google’s access to his newspaper websites in an effort to encourage the public to pay for the news they read online. Specifically, he wants to block Google’s access to the Wall Street Journal’s online content (which is a subscription service), because Wall Street Journal articles can currently be read for free via Google.
Yesterday, Google announced on their blog (available here) that they have now updated their “First Click Free” program so publishers can limit users to viewing no more than five articles a day without registering or subscribing to the service. Previously, all clicks coming through Google’s search engine were free, regardless of quantity.
Josh Cohen, Google’s senior business product manager, said in his post:
“If you’re a Google user, this means that you may start to see a registration page after you’ve clicked through to more than five articles on the website of a publisher using First Click Free in a day…”
This way, the news publishers still get their articles indexed, but can charge for reading at the same time.
Google’s new policy might help satisfy Rupert Murdoch, who has said that media companies should charge for content and stop news aggregators like Google from “feeding off the hard-earned efforts and investments of others.”
The price to be paid however, is that subscription-based news content won’t necessarily get placed at the top of the search findings. Per Google, “That is not a decision we make based on whether or not it’s free. It’s simply based on the popularity of the content with users and other sites that link to it.”
