Google Updates Policy on News Pay Walls. ‘First Click Free’ to End.
Google’s plans include doing away with the “first click free” policy, which requires subscription-based news outlets to offer three free articles a day through its search
and news features, allowing users to skirt pay walls.
A new program, which Google plans to start this week
and is calling “flexible sampling,” will allow those publishers to determine how many free clicks to give Google’s users.
Google is also looking at ways to help people subscribe to publications more easily, including using
machine learning to help publishers tailor options to a reader’s preferences and behavior.
