Wednesday, December 2, 2009

PLN27

Today I read an article from the BBC entitled, "Google to limit free news access". This article states that the news sources that Google links to are going to make its readers pay if they try to access more than five pages of news each day. News groups are saying that Google is letting people have free access to all their news for free by linking to their websites and going around the subscription guidelines. If you try to get news from more than five pages of the same news source they are going to make you register, or subscribe to their service. There is an analysis from Tim Weber, the Business Editor of the BBC News website. He basically says, come on and be reasonable. If Google didn't have a link directly to your media, the people accessing it might never access it another way. Google is easy to use and unless you are a "premium" news source like the Wall Street Journal, get over yourself.

This is important to the world because it could drastically change how and where people choose to get their news. It is important to education because students constantly get their news, research etc. from Google, as I am right now on Google Reader. How will schools deal with this new era of pay as you go? Will schools be exempt? News sources could be giving up a great deal of money if they do, and if schools are free, then who else? I see this as being a big mess. This is important to me because when I do research, even look for an article for these PLN's, I can't tell you how many pages I go through to find something that I need or interests me. I know that the news people are hurting right now, but don't they already have people who subscribe to their websites. I can see this pushing people away from news in general and only going to where it is "free".

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