The WSJ had been one of the outlets least willing to abide by Google’s playbook, disabling access to articles reached via Google search earlier this year.
October 2, 2017
‘Google is rolling out a package of new policies and services to help news publishers increase subscriptions, a move likely to warm its icy relationship with some of the biggest critics of its power over the internet.
Google said it will end this week its decade-old “first click free” policy that required news websites to give readers free access to articles from Google’s search results. The policy upset publishers that require subscriptions, believing it undercut their efforts to get readers to pay for news.’