Google drops ‘first click free’

new york — Google is ending “first click free,” a policy loathed by publishers and media because it 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.

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 Inc, wrote on Monday in a company blog post.

People using Chrome, Google’s web browser, can pick and choose what they are willing to pay for. Publishers had been required to provide at least three free items under the search engine’s previous policy.

Newspapers and magazines have shut down in droves or shrunk 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 decision 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 prepared 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.” — AP