Who'd link to the NYT if it was always a paywall, indeed?

Of course I understand that the publishers don't want to cut themselves out of the conversation.

But why must "the conversation" be limited to powerful internet companies? Do we not converse about news articles in blog posts? Comment threads? Up and coming social platforms that don't have Facebooks media clout yet?

It's simply unfair to treat a visitor arriving at your site from Google differently to a visitor arriving at your site from anywhere else. It runs against the grain of the web. To that end, if I hadn't published this extension, someone else would have made it. If Google removes "Referer" privileges from Chrome extensions, someone will fork Chromium to allow them again. Let's build a better — a more fair — paywall.