But it is very useful, in contexts in which you are searching for things that are important to you and in which you want to have a fuller sense of what information is available, even if it may cost money.

It might not improve the casual news-reading experience, but if it's something important like learning about your child's illness, researching a prospective new employer, or something like that... it's a lot better to know what articles and stories exist on the topic, even if they might cost money to read, rather than having no idea those pieces relevant to your search even exist.

If this were meant to benefit users, it would be an optional filter at the discretion of the user, not a built-in "feature" of the algo.

But they might do it if they thought doing so would cause more people to use their their search engine more, thereby generating more ad clicks. I know I probably would, but otoh I’m probably not their target demo (since I only click about 7 ads per year, usually after coming home drunk from some event).

(https://www.google.com/intl/en/about/ according to Google search today, although I can't see that text in the throng of large images.)

Needs tweaked, that 'universally' is now melting away. Must be the water heating up, as the frog didn't say.

Croak.

And, as for cancelling, let's just say they don't make it easy.

My opinion, for what it's worth, is that traditional publishers will continue to commit suicide no matter what Google do.