The Web search giant said it would adapt its so-called First Click Free program to prompt online readers to register or subscribe to a news provider’s site after reading five free articles from that publisher in a day. – Reuters1
For the last 40 months, on most days, Housing Doom readers have enjoyed a dozen or more links to fresh horrifying news stories about the bubble and burst on our ever-popular "Relevant Articles" sidebar. And thanks to our informants for all the fascinating links you’ve sent us. There’s just no way we could have done all that without you 
But now, perhaps within days, the world’s dominant information cartels are planning to erect one giant insect-proof pay-wall around their garden of content. OK, fine, as my old friend Lt(USN) Mike used to say. As far as Doom North is concerned, Mrs M will simply get to sit down to breakfast with me a little earlier.
But it’s going to be a very different web without small-time human news aggregators.
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[1]: "Google offers publishers limit on free news access", by Georgina Prodhan, Reuters, December 2, 2009.
I doubt that this will have too much of an effect on Doom’s typical links as few will have more than five hits to the same source. As for the news aggregators like yourself, there are plenty of technical workarounds for you or anyone to circumvent this idiotic idea (IP masking).
A better course of action would have been a cooperative agreement between Google and the publishers for ad revenue.