Rupert Murdoch doesn’t like Google. His problem with the search engine giant is that it makes money from helping people find stuff on the internet — stuff like content from News Corp websites.
In the past, he’s criticised Google and other search engines like Yahoo, claiming that when they re-publish summaries from his sites, they’re breaching copyright.
He’s determined to ensure that visitors to his websites pay to view the content. He’s already taken that step with the Times and the Wall Street Journal. He’s also flagged similar intentions with The Australian and other sites.
The Times' paywall
Although, that doesn’t mean that customers aren’t be able to access the sites at all. Instead, they get a snippet of an article; if they want to view the whole article, then they’re prompted to hand over their credit card details.
In 2009, Murdoch explained the strategy to Sky News thus:
“We do it [charge readers for content] already with the Wall Street Journal. We have a wall, but it’s not right to the ceiling. You can get the first paragraph of any story but if you’re not a paying subscriber to WSJ.com, you get a paragraph and a subscription form.”
In theory, that’s true. The problem though, is that not only do the walls not reach the ceilings. They’re also riddled with gaping holes.
Anyone, whether they subscribe to the WSJ or not, can access to content on WSJ.com site — even content that’s supposedly for subscribers only.
And no, you don’t have to be a hacker or do anything illegal to get to the content. You just need to know how to copy and paste.
Here’s how it’s done. Head to WSJ.com and look for some subscriber-only content. You can tell it’s subscriber-only because it has a little key next to it. When you put your mouse over the link, a little message pops up saying ‘Subscribe Content Read Preview’.
And, sure enough, clicking the link gives you only the heading and the first couple of paragraphs, before being prompted .
But, if you want to read the full text, just highlight and copy the headline — in this case ‘Citigroup to Name a New President’. Then go to Google and paste in the headline between double inverted commas. Make sure that you include the inverted commas, so that it’s an exact phrase search. The first search result you’ll get will be the article.
Click the link and Voila! — the full article.
Blame Google or web users if you want, but this isn’t their fault. It’s WSJ.com’s and News Corp’s because their walls aren’t built properly.
Considering that, according to web useability experts Jakob Nielsen and Hoa Loranger in their book Prioritizing Web Usability, an estimated 60 per cent of web users land on an interior page of a website and never come to a site’s homepage, no wonder Rupert Murdoch doesn’t like search engines.
Tags: future of journalism, Google, jorunalism, paywall, Rupert Murdoch, WSJ.com
BreakthePaywall! is a free add-on for Internet Explorer (Firefox coming soon!) that simplifies using the various methods for circumventing website paywall restrictions.