Newspaper publishers will now be able to set a limit on the number of free news articles people can read through Google, the company has announced.

谷歌称，报纸出版商现在可以设定人们在谷歌上浏览到的免费新闻的数目。

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Users will be routed to payment or registration pages

The concession²（让步，妥协） follows claims from some media companies that the search engine is profiting from online news pages.

Under the First Click Free programme, publishers can now prevent unrestricted access to subscription³（捐献，订阅） websites.

Users who click on more than five articles in a day may be routed to payment or registration pages.

'Gaining' revenue

"Previously⁴, each click from a user would be treated as free," Google senior business product manager Josh Cohen said in a blog post.

"Now, we've updated the programme so that publishers can limit users to no more than five pages per day without registering or subscribing⁵."

Media tycoon⁶ Rupert Murdoch had earlier accused firms such as Google of profiting from journalism⁷ by generating advertising⁸ revenue（广告收入） by linking readers to newspaper articles.

Some readers have discovered they can avoid paying subscription fees（订阅费） to newspaper websites by calling up their pages via Google.

BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones said the concession was relatively⁹ minor¹⁰ but Mr Murdoch might see it as vindication¹¹（辩护，证实） of his decision to take on Google.

Google users may start seeing registration pages appear when they click for a sixth time on any given day at websites of publishers using the program, according to Mr Cohen.