I don't know how widely this story is being circulated, but I do want to share this article about Google giving news outlets the opportunity to charge users for reading their stories online.
Basically, some news publishers are arguing that Google News is a "backdoor to subscription-protected sites," like the one maintained by The Wall Street Journal.
As the article explains, "You can read WSJ.com stories for free if you search for them on Google News and then click through. News Corp. The owner of the Wall Street Journal, knows this, but allows it because otherwise Google won’t index its site and then it will lose 25 percent of its traffic."
To appease the publishers, Google has agreed to let news publishers opt into a new program called First Click Free. If publishers choose to participate in the program, they will be able to limit the number of times per day a user can access their stories through Google News. After the publisher-determined limit has been reached, the user will be asked to pay for additional access.
The way I see it, there are two ways of looking at this situation, which I will describe later. For now, read the article and Google's press release and make of them what you will.
No comments:
Post a Comment