Google tweaks news search to benefit publishers

06th October 2017
Google tweaks  news search to  benefit publishers
Popup obscures Google news search result till you shell out one dollar

You may soon have to  pay to open some of the results that pop up on top when you search on Google News
IndiaTechOnline  OPINION
Bangalore, October 6 2017: A Bloomberg report on Monday, has  triggered dozens of follow-up stories all saying roughly the same thing:   Google will shortly tweak its news search engine  to appease  publications who expect readers to pay before viewing their content. 
Millions of readers who daily use the search engine to access  print and online news sites, have generally been able to read the stories that pop up on top of the search results.  This is because Google bent on publishers to ensure that searchers could at least read the first story they clicked  on one site, for free.  There are  some publishers -- notably  financial media like the Wall St. Journal and the ( London) Financial Times -- who even today  send  out a pop-up obscuring the result of your search, unless you shell out a subscription immediately,  for one week's or one  month's viewing   which could range  from $1 to $ 30. 
What Google used to do -- till now -- was to  slightly downgrade such sites  protected by a pay wall and ensure that news sources that  freely allowed access to their stories  appeared higher up in the results.  So chances were you could read the top few news links without a hitch.  Sounds reasonable, one would think. After all, we the millions who go to Google for all our information and news are the ones who sustain its business and enable it to attract advertisements to its sites.
But no;  in the  new skewed priorities of Google, it has decided to  appease publishers who demand a subscription for their site . It has decided to do away with its policy of  " first click free" for searchers  and has reportedly assured  news organisations that those who operated a pay wall would be listed along with those who did not, without any bias.    And it  will  enter into revenue-share arrangements with publishers who charge  searchers for viewing their content. Cozy, very cozy.
Our own, Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO is said by  Chief Business Officer Phillip Schindler in the Bloomberg report    to be "very closely involved in a number of  publisher discussions... The wonderful thing about Sundar ( is), he is a news geek."
So am I. But I am guessing  lakhs of Google premis in India will  feel badly let down, not to say, annoyed , if they do a news search, click on a headline they like to read and then find a  pop up banner which says in effect: "Sorry!  Pay first, read later!"   If as promised  ( or rather threatened) Google goes through with its surrender to   pay wall publishers, we can expect to waste a lot of time with futile searches that are no longer free.  If sites don't want their stuff to be read for free, they have a  simple solution --  tell Google NOT to list you in searches.  But no, they want to have their cake and eat it too. They ask to be indexed by Google search engines --  then  sneak in their NoGo sign. 
If I remember right,  the Google news search tool is the work of another great  Indian --Krishna Bharat --  whose  innovative  algorithm continues to fuel  the application.   The unique qualities  of  Bharat's automated tool to  scour  tens of thousands of news portals and come up with the results you were looking for, have somehow been diminished and demeaned by Google's   latest  crass descent into commercialization. 
Yes, make money from our searches, Sundar,  but  in the process, don't   bite the  millions of ordinary hands that feeds the entire search business.  - ANAND PARTHASARATHY