Google continues to leverage its power to provide a better experience for their users as they click on links they find through search. This is one example, and

Google continues to leverage its power to provide a better experience for their users as they click on links they find through search. This is one example, and First Click Free is another. The flip side of this is that publishers are now offering an inferior experience to users who navigate directly to their sites. If I type in NYTimes.com and start browsing through articles because I'm a big fan of The New York Times, I'm treated worse (I have to deal with an article limit and pagination) than if I stumble on their articles through Google. Google is giving more and more value to brands, while creating an atmosphere that rewards people who have no brand loyalty (except to Google). Google has been strong-arming publishers for a long time. Generally it has made the Internet a better place, but it still makes me nervous (especially as a publisher). Google seems to be pushing to eliminate more and more tactics that are profitable for publishers (and generally bad for users). I doubt that Google will kill the goose that laid the golden egg, but you have to think that publishers are going to start to push back if it goes much further.