Google’s “first-click-free” policy dropped, now hated by its users
If there’s one thing people love these days, it’s free stuff. And what do people love more than free stuff? The Internet.
Photo from independent.com.uk
It was as if the skies opened up over the Internet as Google announced dropping the “first click free” policy last Monday. Publishers and media companies’ hearts enlightened as Google explained the changes in the policy.
Among the changes announced by Google were that they’re ending free clicks so publishers can decide what and if they want to provide for free. Google will now produce a suite of products and services aimed at broadening the audience for publishers in an attempt to drive subscriptions and revenue, which is called the GSuite.
According to Google, they wanted to help publishers and media, as much as possible, to boost their subscriptions by cutting their old policy of requiring them to provide a limited amount of free content, like a free trial, before asking the users to pay for it later on.
Apparently, publishers and media hated the policy because those free content such as videos, stories and photos were expensive to produce. Richard Gingras, Vice President of News at Google Inc., said in a company blog post, “Publishers will now be allowed to decide how many, if any, free articles they want to offer the readers before charging a fee.”
Along with this, Chrome (Google’s web browser) users are able to pick what they are willing to pay for.
These all looms over the Google users who are now entitled to pay for the information that they want to see. As newspapers and magazine companies shut down, people will now have to rely on websites’ “free content” for news.
Dropping this policy was also one of the answers for avoiding fake news. According to News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson, 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.
Come to think of it, if publishers would make the users pay for what they see, they would eventually go back to free news on television and radios because online news, whether they’re amazing stories or timely, are not free and would be harder to access.
That’s tough luck for media companies. It’s high time for them to rethink their joys right now. Mostly because students rely on online news to see how the world works now; in fact, not just students, but almost all Internet users too—ranging from the young to the old. The removal of the policy would soon backfire because some people aren’t willing to pay $5-10 or P250-550 to see news that will soon get old. That’s not how money or life works.
Google should be concerned about the negative aspects of disregarding the policy. Quoting Nicholas Sparks, “It’s not going to be easy, it’s going to be really hard.” Good luck, Google and may your users not find this as a horrible, terrible mess.
