In nod to media, Google News policy limited

As the journalism industry gathers once again to wring its hands about the future, Google has thrown it a bone with new limitations on its "First Click Free" policy for news stories shown on Google News. Companies that operate subscription-based Web sites don't want to expose the full text of their articles to Google. But despite what Wall Street Journal owner Rupert Murdoch says, most of them also want their articles and sites discoverable through Google and Google News. As a compromise, Google has allowed those publishers to participate in what it calls a "First Click Free" program, where articles accessed through Google News links can be seen in their entirety, but if the user attempts to click anywhere else on that story page, they are directed to a sign-up page. The problem is that Web users quickly figured out that you can access almost any Wall Street Journal article for free simply by cutting and pasting the headline into Google News, which generates a "free" link that isn't available if another publisher links to a Wall Street Journal article. As a result, Google is now putting limits on the First Click Free usage. Web publishers can now decide to limit use of the First Click Free rule to five times per person per day through both Google News and regular Google search results. It's not clear whether readers could get around this issue by clearing cookies from their browser or enabling private browsing, but a Google representative said it will be up to Web publishers to decide how they want to track visitors through some combination of cookies or IP addresses.