I think its probably a good thing for people searching for something in particular. I notice when I search any WSJ article that it never shows up anywhere, and their search facilities are a bit poor when it comes to matching certain results. Same with the Miami Herald. You can't even read certain articles without signing up, and it would be helpful to me to have a way to search for articles on a particular item and have it search the other sites -- even if I needed a subscription.
http://www.elibrary.com/ used to be excellent for this but I think they went out of business. They indexed every periodical and allowed searches across newspapers, etc.
I don't think they'll be surfing sites that require paid memberships, and if they are, then I will bet they are going to have sites like WSJ hand them free access because the WSJ benefits from having people click through and be asked if they want to see the article.
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