Amid rising complaints from prominent media houses, Google has finally relaxed its rules for free news content on its search engine. It has been decided that subscription news websites will not be compelled to provide three free articles per day to users. Earlier, the rules dictated that they would face low prominence if they didn’t offer free articles. The decision has been taken as major media groups such as News Corp. were complaining about lower sales level due to this rule.
During the last 10 years, Google had adopted a policy of first free click to its users. Hence, enabling the non-subscribers to get access to free news without being haunted by the paid subscription offers when searching for news articles online. Google had initially planned that free samples of news content will boost subscriptions in the long run.
However, online subscriptions did not show any significant rise barring a few publications. Adding to its whammy, large media houses such as Wall Street Journal’s parent company News Corp. complained that free users are hampering its sales drastically.
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Therefore, Wall Street finally decided not to adhere to Google’s policy as they were willing to drop their search rankings but eventually increase subscriptions. Realizing the gravity of the matter, Google’s Vice President for news, Richard Gingras said:
“Over the last year, we got clear indications that, yes, it was going to be important for publishers to grow subscription revenues”
He also said that the number of news websites with rising paid subscriptions have shown a significant rise since last year. Thus, it has become imperative for Google to develop a tool to tackle this issue at its earliest.
Google is currently banking on its relaxed policies and developing subscription tools to prevent major media houses and publications from holding back adequate content. Thus, the publishers now have the bargaining power to decide the number of articles Google users can access for free.
Google has also planned subscription tools
Realizing the need to increase subscriptions for publishers, Google has planned to launch free software within the next few months. This software will encourage users to buy content by using their credit card information given to Google earlier.
The aim of this software is to aid users in purchasing articles with a click of a button. In addition, Google will share customers’ details with the publishers.
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Richard also said that another tool is also being developed which will provide data on how to maximize sign ups. However, Google hasn’t made any decision regarding the cost recovery of this project.
He also said:
“Google search is valuable because there’s a rich ecosystem out there. To the extent the web is healthy, that’s very good for our core business. Our objective is not for this to be a new line of business”
Other competitors such as Facebook, are also working on these subscriber registration tools. Apple also came up with subscriptions tools in its News app last year.