Your content is safe with Google?

For a while now subscription based news outlets have been upset at how easy it is to access their content through Google News searches. While it’s good for us and makes it easier and cheaper to find the content we’re looking for, it is causing real harm to papers that rely on online subscriptions for income. Rupert Murdoch maintains that “quality content is not free” and has gone as far as to call the allowance of free access to this content outright theft.

Now, Google has changed their policies to allow publishers of paid for content to opt out or have more control over the amount of free access “Googlers” have to their websites. Really this option has existed for a while, it was just more complicated to execute. Previously, publishers had to fill out an online form to opt out of Google News, now they can opt out or set controls automatically through a file they download to their site.

Will this option help to save papers and online content providers? We’ll have to wait and see. It is either a positive step forward for sites that depend on the money brought in from online subscriptions or a step backwards (as Arianna Huffington would see it) for old media that needs to “get real.”

- Ali Smith