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Google May Limit Free News Access
You know how, if you want to read a paywalled newspaper article, you can just paste its title into Google News and get a free pass? Those days may be coming to an end. Reader Captian Spazzz writes: "It looks like Google may be bowing to pressure from folks like News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch. What I don't understand is what prevents the websites themselves from enforcing some limit. Why make Google do it?" (Danny Sullivan explains how they could do that.) "Newspaper publishers will now be able to set a limit on the number of free news articles people can read through Google, the company has announced. The concession follows claims from some media companies that the search engine is profiting from online news pages. Publishers will join a First Click Free programme that will prevent web surfers from having unrestricted access. Users who click on more than five articles in a day may be routed to payment or registration pages."
Most 'papers like Google and the visitors Google sends them; so the Google Bot and hits with a google.com Referer tend to get a free pass. Use this to your advantage:
"can visit one article a day.."
great thanks
look, either get behind a paywall and disappear or dont!, the rest of us dont really care as we will just get our news from somewhere who doesnt put up walls and doesnt want the web looking like a version of TV
thats why i like the web, its a level playing field and because of that it pisses off big business no end
People used to get their news by looking for a news brand like BBC or The Times, and reading stuff that was presented under that brand. Now a lot of people look for news under topics that interest them, and skip between news brands doing so. What google is offering to do will have little effect on such news browsers, who will have a choice of several competing free links under their topic of interest. People linking to interesting stories will simply copy and paste the content they wish to discuss.
The print industry is dead and just doesn't know it yet.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
I'm still utterly baffled by what's going on here, and neither article seems to answer my questions. Since, in most cases, Google News only displays a snippet of the article (almost certainly fair use?) and then requires readers to click through to the actual web site of the news source to read the rest of the article, what is preventing those sites from implementing whatever access control scheme they feel like? (This should have nothing at all to do with robots.txt or ACAP which is about whether the *Google spider* can see the content, not whether users linking from Google can.) Am I missing some technical point?
TFA says
"Previously, each click from a user would be treated as free," Google senior business product manager Josh Cohen said in a blog post.
So it sounds like (maybe?) the news sites have a policy that says that clickthroughs from Google don't have to be routed through their access control. Why? Is this something Google requires newspapers to do in order to do display links to them on Google News? This seems to be the best theory, but I didn't see anything anywhere that actually said that.
So, in sum, is this a technical or a social/legal/contractual issue, and what, exactly, is it that is preventing these news sites from using their normal access control?
Easy. Google wants access to the data, and doesn't want to be shut out. Therefore, it's in their interest to implement something that appeases the Murdochs of the world. I don't quite think people understand just how much influence and clout Murdoch (and people like him) have in the world. More fundamentally, from Murdoch's point of view, if Google does it, then the changes can apply to all newspapers, including his competitors. If only Murdoch's news empire does it, then there is less chance of other newspapers following the trend. I suspect Murdoch does not want that many competitors offering free news, and actively wants to encourage the vast majority of newspapers out there to adopt a similar pay-per-view model, because that means that it's a fairly level playing field in terms of competition. So, if you get Google to do it, it encourages everyone else to follow along.
This all reminds me of a nice little lesson from history when the thriving independent press were shut out a few hundred years ago because of spiralling costs. Advertising became the big funder of newspapers back then, and those that attracted the most funding were able to crush all competition. Independents simply couldn't compete with the rocketing costs of machinery, distribution etc. The market became a wonderful tool of censorship. I won't be surprised to see this having a similar effect ie. shutting down a lot of independents who rely on free news for commentary. Difficult to predict, but it's worth thinking about. I hope I'm wrong.
Always knew that having an advertising company as the gatekeeper to knowledge on the internet was a bad idea.
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
Who needs an alternative of BBC? They are simply the best out there. I for one am willing to pay their licence even though I do not live in the UK. Just broadcast me all their channels and I'll pay. I have not watched any other television in 9 years. I tried the local channels (Dutch) a few times and got sick by the ads. Can't stand them!
Newspapers were once the only source of information
Then came Radio and TV, and they because the source of in depth well researched information
Then came the Internet, they could have a role as a known reliable source of information
The problem is that the only role they have left is to be a reliable source of in depth news - and my experience is that they are not reliable, cover most stories in a very superficial way, do poor research (mostly from the internet, or direct from press statements) and are not very well written ....
If they were a bit more processional then people would be willing to pay for their content, as it is people will just go elsewhere...
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
> In effect Google has given me a "hit" on my search then led me to a place where not even the search terms are present... Google crawler has access to it but I do not.
Google punished BMW.de for doing something similar to this before.
http://news.cnet.com/Google-blacklists-BMW.de/2100-1024_3-6035412.html
Quote: This is a violation of our Webmaster quality guidelines, specifically the principle of 'Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users,'" Cutts' blog said.
Go figure.