Google Makes Changes On Free News Stories

Google announced on Sunday that subscription news websites would no longer have to offer users three free articles per day or face less prominence in search results.

The search giant has unveiled measures to help publishers sell more digital subscriptions after concluding that advertising is not enough to sustain large news operations.

Richard Gingras, Google’s vice-president of news, said the changes would improve the “sometimes painful process” of buying or renewing a digital subscription, adding that “advertising alone can no longer pay for high quality journalism”.

For the last decade, Google's "first click free" policy helped guarantee that non-subscribers wouldn't be stifled by pay-walls when they clicked on news articles from searches.

Google, the largest component of Alphabet, had contended that free samples would lead to increased subscriptions.

But apart from a few publications, online subscriptions haven't taken off as planned, and media companies such as Wall Street Journal parent News Corp increasingly complained that freeloading users were cutting into sales.

This year, the Wall Street Journal stopped enduring Google's policy, corresponding to a drop in search rankings but an increase in subscriptions.

Gingras said Google’s goal was “to make subscriptions work flawlessly everywhere, for everyone”, and the company would launch “products and services to help news publishers reach new audiences, drive subscriptions and grow revenue.”

"Over the last year, we got clear indications that, yes, it was going to be important for publishers to grow subscription revenues," said Gingras.

He said the number of news outlets with paywalls had reached a critical mass in the last year, to the point that it made sense for Google to start developing tools for them.

Google is now counting on the relaxed rules and subscription software that is under development to stop the Wall Street Journal and other publishers from holding back valuable content.

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