> So, you are saying, if the NYT did not allow casual use

The NyTimes is not doing that for "casual use" they are doing it to allow Google's crawler access to the site so it can be indexed and show up on search engine result pages. This is why the incognito trick works on so many news websites.

> that you need to keep killing your cookies

I don't kill my cookies, I just cmd+shift+n to open incognito.

As for supporting sites I value, I visit so many of these sites, and read them, that I would potentially face financial ruin if I had to pay for them all. I get it, I want to support them, but I cannot, not at those prices, not when I can just open my incognito window, and not when even though I pay for the site I still have to deal with ads that roll down content as I'm trying to read it.

And I imagine you might have adblock enabled while you're sitting there judging me about not giving them cash for accessing the site. ;)

The incognito trick has nothing to do with the Googlebot. Sites can definitively know the Googlebot by its IP, and Google doesn't care about if other visitors with no referrer see a paywall. The probably reason the New York Times doesn't use a more comprehensive paywall is that those generally have failure modes like accidentally blocking humans who haven't been on your site before. Sites like the New York Times have weak paywalls to be user-friendly, not because it's required by Google.

It doesn't have anything to do with Googlebot, it has to do with Google's "ghosting" rules: You can't have inaccessible pages be indexed, you need to permit visitors X views free per day/month.

Only when the referrer is a Google-owned domain. This has nothing to do with opening a link in an incognito window.

NYTimes has a leaky paywall to allow people to try their site, become interested, and then become subscribers. It has nothing to do with Google. Google only requires that a search result allows a person to click on results. WSJ has a stronger paywall that allows clicks through Google. That's why with the WSJ you have to do a search on a story headline, and then click on the results - you can't go directly through WSJ.

Re: Incognito Mode - the reason that works is it starts you out without any cookies. You've effectively cleared "all" your coookies.

Re: Supporting these sites - if you would really potentially face financial ruin, then that's a much different reason than you originally gave, which was that you felt like you would be a jackass for reading a site that you could hack into for free. The "I can't afford it" at least makes sense. I've personally decided that $3.75/week is worth it for me , but your financial situation may be different than mine, and I can at least appreciate that logic.

Re: Adblock - don't use it - though, not for any desire to support the sites, just isn't a big enough deal for me to worry about it.