The Rupert Murdoch Impact: Google to Limit Free News Access

One would think this is going to be a home run for news services like Breitbart that, I am assuming, won't limit access via this new Google option. 

I'm not necessarily against protection of written work, but for basic generic news, who the hell is going to go to a pay service? This is all going to get very interesting. My gut tells me some third option will emerge.

Here's the latest from the BBC:

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.
Under the First Click Free programme, publishers can now prevent unrestricted access to subscription websites.
Users who click on more than five articles in a day may be routed to payment or registration pages.

"Previously, each click from a user would be treated as free," Google senior business product manager Josh Cohen said in a blog post.

"Now, we've updated the programme so that publishers can limit users to no more than five pages per day without registering or subscribing."

Google users may start seeing registration pages appear when they click for a sixth time on any given day at websites of publishers using the programme, according to Mr Cohen.

This will only affect websites that currently charge for content/blockquote>

Here's the full BBC story.

Here's the Josh Cohen blog post.