FT.com Goes Free, Sort Of

Felix Salmon has already decreed that the Financial Times will stop charging for web content, but the paper still seems to be in denial.

Today, FT announces a somewhat clever new system whereby visitors to the site will only be required to pay if they make more than 30 page views per month.

This is FT's answer to the Google problem: that subscription-only articles are effectively invisible to Google, which drives an obscene proportion of traffic, and which even regular readers of a newspaper's website will often use as a shortcut to find stories there.

Points to FT for creativity, and for recognizing that its core readers are probably expensing their subscriptions anyway, and thus don't mind the cost. (Or perhaps I should say: They mind the cost less than the hassle.) Still, like Playboy.com's redesign, it seems like a half measure, a temporary way-station en route to an all-free model. I suspect Felix would agree.