Google will try to help newspapers and other publishers boost subscriptions by ending policy that required them to provide a limited amount of free content before users of the world's biggest search engine could be asked to pay for it.
Google's "first click free" policy was loathed by publishers and media because while the stories, videos and images appearing on Google have been free for its users, it is expensive to produce.
Publishers had been required to provide at least three free items under the search engine's previous policy.
Publishers will now be allowed to decide how many, if any, free articles they want to offer readers before charging a fee, Richard Gingras, vice president of news at Google, wrote Monday in a company blog post.
People using Chrome, Google's web browser, can pick and choose what they are willing to pay for.
Among the changes announced by Google:
- Click for free is over. Publishers decide what and if they want to provide for free
- Google will produce a suite of products and services aimed at broadening the audience for publishers in an attempt to drive subscriptions and revenue.
- Streamline payment methods so that readers can tailor their own experience. That would include access to a publication's digital content with one click. That content could then be accessed anywhere - whether it's on a publisher's website or mobile app, or on Google Newsstand, Google Search or Google News.
Newspapers and magazines have shut down in droves or they have been force to shrink operations drastically worldwide because of the influx of stories, images and video jettisoned across the interment, largely at no charge. Technological changes have fractured the advertising market and constrained revenues for almost all established media.
Much of the content, created and paid for by media companies, travels through Google's Chrome, which captured nearly 60 per cent of all searches in September, according to NetMarketShare.
The change in Google policy was hailed immediately by major media companies.
"If the change is properly introduced, the impact will be profoundly positive for journalists everywhere and for the cause of informed societies," News Corp CEO Robert Thomson said in a statement.
"Fake news has prospered on digital platforms which have commodified content and thus enabled bad actors to game the system for commercial or political gain."
Shares of companies like New York Times Co, News Corp, EW Scripps and Tronc Inc all rose in when the market opened on Monday.
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