My most recent blog, titled 'Google must tread carefully as Microsoft and Murdoch start talks', covered an interesting development by shrewd media mogul Rupert Murdoch in the battle for 'free news to the web'.

Murdoch, who calls Google's loose publishing of news 'stealing', met with search market share-aspirants Microsoft in what was seen as a threat to Google that if it doesn't stop providing free content, News Limited will block Google in favour of Microsoft and its search engine, Bing.

Google has seemingly buckled.

Google's program 'First Click Free' was designed a while back for publishers of paid content (e.g. Wall Street Journal owned by Murdoch) to show one page for free. Any subsequent clicks should lead to a need for users to 'subscribe' to the publisher's website.

This program did have a loophole, where the free version of this content was usually searchable and viewable via Google News.

Google now says: "Previously, each click from a user would be treated as free. Now, we've updated the program so that publishers can limit users to no more than five pages per day without registering or subscribing."

This concession, while small, could win some fans among publishers.

Please click here for a Reuters video covering this topic.

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