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The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

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Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#212

Tangent: I'm not sure I can think of recent money I've spent better than a year-long Washington Post subscription. Not because I want to support journalism (though I do), but because having a whole newspaper to flip through every day is so much more productive and efficient than getting dribs and drabs through Twitter and free news sites --- many of which are ultimately sourcing through the journalism that organizati…

To lower the barrier even further, if you're an Amazon Prime subscriber and subscribe via Amazon, the first 6 months are free and then the cost is $4/month thereafter.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#213
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't believe IP should be protected? So every single author out there should not get paid? If their content isn't protected, they it's illogical to suggest they should also get paid. Anyone could reproduce that content and redistribute it. That's ludicrous. Film crews ought not be paid? Because if they can't sell their work, then what are they supposed to eat while making movies? Without IP protection, you no longer…

Obviously, this is too complex a problem to discuss here, so I'll make only a few points: (1) It isn't really relevant for my point about paying the publishers. If anything, IP protection makes my point stronger. (2) I'm not suggesting to abolish IP protection, because I'm not sure I'm right. That's why I said I believe IP protection is not needed. I know I cannot argue my opinion sufficiently. (3) My biggest issue w…

> drugs ... one time payment

That'd have to be an incredibly large one-time payment. And how would we know how much to pay?

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#214

Tangent: I'm not sure I can think of recent money I've spent better than a year-long Washington Post subscription. Not because I want to support journalism (though I do), but because having a whole newspaper to flip through every day is so much more productive and efficient than getting dribs and drabs through Twitter and free news sites --- many of which are ultimately sourcing through the journalism that organizati…

To lower the barrier even further, if you're an Amazon Prime subscriber and subscribe via Amazon, the first 6 months are free and then the cost is $4/month thereafter.

What's funny/terrible about this is that I am in fact a Prime subscriber, and didn't know this. I'm tempted to revise my subscription stuff and add the NYT. :)

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#215
This is why google needs to get into social search. WSJ is basically moving discovery from traditional search to social search. how many searches across social platforms is google completely missing out on? I know for certain topics, i run to twitter to search as opposed to google. buy google already

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#216

Tangent: I'm not sure I can think of recent money I've spent better than a year-long Washington Post subscription. Not because I want to support journalism (though I do), but because having a whole newspaper to flip through every day is so much more productive and efficient than getting dribs and drabs through Twitter and free news sites --- many of which are ultimately sourcing through the journalism that organizati…

It's amazing how many people I know who have subscribed to the WaPo in the last 12 months. I know, I know - echo chamber - but it gives me great hope that quality news organizations have a future. If executed properly, most people are willing to pay for quality content (side note: a major pet peeve of mine is when you pay for a subscription and are then bombarded with obnoxious pop-up ads whenever you try to access said paid content online).

I've been a long-term WSJ subscriber and recently switched to the digital-only subscription due to the quality of their tablet app, but it remains a guilty pleasure of mine to buy up a selection of hard copy newspapers on a rainy weekend and lock myself away for hours.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've paid for the WSJ for over 15 years. There's nothing wrong with actually paying for good content. That business model doesn't need to go away.

I completely agree. The real problem is pricing. The difference between absolutely free like most content on the internet and the WSJ standard monthly rate of $33/month is truly enormous. The NYT, which I also feel is priced too high, is $15/month. Remember Netflix costs $10/month-- that's the value proposition they need to compete against. These content producers should charge $5/month, with no scummy "special intro…

If they lower the price they might not get more subscribers. So they are pricing it to maximize revenue.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#218
post #103

If anyone's looking for another workaround, the article actually hints at the solution: Facebook's l.php redirect that it uses when you click on a link shared through the platform. It functions similarly to the Google redirect, and you don't even need a Facebook account for it to work. E.g. https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/article...

How come this isn't culturally perceived in the same way as not paying for software or movies or music? I've read various reasons why people don't want to pay. That's fine. But then simply don't read it.

This is the equivalent of reading a magazine in the bookstore and not buying it. It would be different if you walked out the store without paying.

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#219

The larger problem here is that unless they plan to have their Google search results all say "click here to pay" or similar, this entire scheme violates Google's cloaking policy and should result in their being deindexed. This has traditionally been the entire reason that sites offered this workaround - it wasn't out of the goodness of their hearts. Here's hoping Google actually enforces their policy.

What I don't get is that they could just leave the first two paragraphs and let every see that, then require you to subscribe for more - google would accept that and they would still show up in search, right?

That's what Experts Exchange was doing. Back in the days before Stack Overflow, EE was one of the hot places to go for answers to software engineering problems. It was a free site for many years, then one day they decided to require a subscription to read the answers. Google still indexed the question, so that you would open up a EE link, only to be greeted with "the answer requires a subscription". Google allowed that for a number of years before finally deindexing their results, but it took bloody forever!

Re: The Wall Street Journal to Close Google Loophole Entirely

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree, it is probably a case of not being in their target market: - Average age: 40+ - Average household income: 250k+ - Average household net worth: 1.5m+ From http://www.wsjmediakit.com/files/uploads/201410/2016_WSJcom_... .

Here is a working link that contains all the the info parent cites: http://www.wsjmediakit.com/files/uploads/201410/WSJ.com%20Au... Also, this is the _actual_ audience not their _target_ audience.

How do you know it's not also the target audience?
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