PC World: Murdoch Pay Per News is Coming - Meanwhile How to Read the WSJ for Free Using the Google Washing Trick

PC World reports that Rupert Murdoch and other publishers are cooking up a plan to start charging you and us for reading most of their content online.

Boo. Hiss.

The good thing about this PC World story is the tidbit that they throw into it that makes explicit how you can legitimately circumvent the WSJ paywall restrictions on their content by going through Google to read a story:

...But will customers be willing to pay for content they are used to getting for free? I think it's possible, but it depends on how much newspaper content ends up behind paywalls.

The other question is whether newspapers would allow the common trick of using Google to get around the WSJ paywall. When you want to read something on WSJ.com that's behind its paywall, all you have to do is copy the headline, plug it into Google and follow Google's link to read the complete article for free. The WSJ allows this loophole so it can grow its readership, and the paper probably hopes some of those free readers will subscribe in the future. Since Google helps to increase WSJ readership, the Google loophole is likely to remain in place and could become a trend at least for News Corp sites. But if that's the case, I wonder whether readers will be willing to fork over subscription fees, or whether the "Google washing" technique to keep on getting free content will become a common tactic among online readers...