As newspapers fall onto tougher and tougher times, Google has come under fire from many, including Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., for basically making it easy for web searchers to find news. After all, Google indexes just about everything. On Tuesday, Google announced modification to an existing program, called First Click Free, which will address that criticism, and allow publishers to, if they want, limit online readers to a certain number of views without paying or registering.
Recently, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. has threatened to remove its articles from indexing by Google. It's even been said to be working with Microsoft on the issue. Microsoft has, in fact, offered to pay News Corp. and other media content providers, to withhold their content from Google's search index but allow Microsoft's Bing to host the content. The new changes to First Click Free program is designed to offset that threat.
You may have previously noticed, for example, that if you find a Wall Street Journal article via searching Google News, you can view the article in its entirety, even if it were normally something you had to be a subscriber to view. This is allowed because otherwise Google couldn't index the content past the registration or login form. This sort of loophole has been used by some users to bypass paying for site content.
What has changed? Previously, all clicks of this nature were considered "free." Now the user's first click to the content is free, but when a user clicks on additional links on the site, the publisher can show a payment or registration request. The publisher can limit users, if desired, to no more than five pages per day without registering or subscribing.
This has some serious implications for news aggregators, and is a reversal for Google. Previously, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that News Corp.'s idea to charge for all its content may not work.
Google's new policy might also change the way results from queries are returned. The reason for that is not because subscription content will be ranked lower per se, but instead because ranking is based on the popularity of the content with users and other sites that link to it. Subscription articles may place lower with lower popularity.
In reality, this is a small change for Google, but potentially a large change for content providers, some of whom felt "used" by the search giant. Whether or not this satisfies News Corp. and Rupert Murdoch is an open question. With Microsoft's previously mentioned alternative in the works, it may be that News Corp. finds that more attractive.
Written by Michael Santo
HULIQ.com
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