Google Inc is presently allowing publishers of its content to limit the number of free news articles to about five. These articles are accessed by viewers on its Internet search engine, which has been free so far. This decision has been taken as a concession to an ever increasing demand of those media industry elements who are disgruntled about the free access that Google permits so far.
There has been considerable criticism about the approach of Google from several media publishers in particular the chairman of News Corp as well chief executive Rupert Murdoch who argue the company was making profits from its online news based pages.
The senior business product manager of Google in a blog write up said that the company had been updating its “First Click Free” program so that publishers could limit the users from viewing no more than five articles in a day without registering or even subscribing. Earlier every click of the user of the search of Google would be treated free.
Says Cohen, “If you’re a Google user, this means that you may start to see a registration page after you’ve clicked through to more than five articles on the website of publisher using “First Click Free” in a day, while allowing publishers to focus on potential subscribers who are accessing a lot of their content on a regular basis.”
At news conference Murdoch said that the media companies should be charging for the content and must stop news aggregators like the Google from “feeding off the hard-earned efforts and investments of others”
Many viewers so far have been using the Google search engine to get their information. In fact world over it is a very useful source of information.
