Google announced a new policy that it will no longer allow unfettered access to subscription sites through its news feeds. Instead, users will only get five free links before being directed to a subscription service sign up on sites that require such subscriptions. Read more on npr.org.
The rumor seems to be that it was in response to cooperation between Microsoft and Rupert Murdoch, who owns several media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal. See the article in the Financial Times. (Rather humorously, you’ll have to deal with a subscription issue for this site.)
What I’ll be interested in seeing is whether it will work. The idea of course is, those who had been getting content for free will now subscribe. But will they? I don’t think that people who are surfing Google for their news are likely to subscribe. There may be some who might have subscribed but chose not to because they discovered they could get the content for free through Google, but I think this anecdote may be few and far between.
Additionally, if we look at advertising funding models, more clicks generates more money. So are these business shooting themselves in the foot?
What do you think? Are online subscription models what media should be looking at to save their shrinking bottom line?
