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Here's a much more mature analysis of what's going on.

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20091014-711422.html

Posted article is fairly shallow, and this deserves some better analysis.

Apologies for the link - requires a subscription if you don't hit it from a Google search for "Wal-Mart Expands Cheap No-Contract Wireless Plan". Thanks Rupert.

You mean: "thanks", Rupert.

But a sincere thanks to you for explaining to get there via a google search.

Which raises questions (besides the 'why am i out of loop'?):

• How did you know about the "via google" phenomenon for this article?

• Is that true for all/many wsj articles?

• Why does Rupert love Google referrals?

Silly newspapers. They want to charge for content but can't bear the thought of losing traffic. So they keep the door open to non-subscribers through Google, and hope subscribers (or potential subscribers) won't find out.

"Cloaking" is a naughty SEO tactic of showing one thing (like an article) to search engines and a different thing (like a login screen) to humans. Google bans cloaking; their punishment is de-indexing. But there is a loophole: showing the same thing to Googlebot and regular browsers with a Google referer isn't considered cloaking. The NY Times also uses this technique.

I can't tell you why you're out of the loop, though.

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