Limits To Being Free

Rupert Murdoch was making noise some time ago about charging for news content on the Internet. Google has just decided that they understand what Mr. Murdoch was talking about. Not all news content accessed via Google will continue to be free.

It's Google that's been making the money off such content. The revenue from the Google ads aren't going to the news organizations that invested time and money in research and writing, while Google doesn't pay a single cent for the material that crowds out its advertising space. Anyone with business sense can see that the arrangement was grossly unfair to the producer and highly beneficial to Google (what a scientist would call a parasitic relationship).

You'll get five free clicks in the future. Visit a news publisher's site and you can read five separate stories. On your sixth click, you'll be sent to a registration page where you'll have the opportunity to pay for your curiosity.

Josh Cohen of Google sees it as all to the good. Google still gets the free content that fuels their search engine. Rupert Murdoch and his ilk get some revenue to compensate their labors. If you took advantage of a Google search and read an entire newspaper cover to cover, you'll soon discover that your unlimited browsing has a limit.

Want to read one of Rupert Murdoch's newspapers for free? You'll have to march yourself over to the local public library and wait your turn.

Otherwise, you'll have to pay up for your Google search results. The days of unlimited and free access to all information has reached its limit, and it's the hard reality of money that's created the barricade.