From John Battelle's Searchblog: Is Subscription the Next Thing?

Great article by John Battelle about the potential of search engines moving in the direction of distributors. John speaks about having someone like google provide a 'googlish' (John's word btw) interface for access to the NYT, BBC, WSJ, etc for $40/month.
Although this may sound like a novel idea there are already a handful of news providers out there doing this or at least trying to do this. A few years back I was working with McKinsey and Company as we looked at news delivery mechanisms on the Internet. An important consideration (as John rightly points out) is that without the heavy weights, such as the NYT, etc., you aren't able to deliver a lot of value. Dow Jones had a great online product which they called DowVision. Dow Vision is also the name of their newsfeed which includes NYT, WSJ, Barrons, etc.

At the time they were charging in the neighborhood of $15 to $20/month and allowing users to keep saved searches. Unfortunately, they took it down about a year ago or so.

Anyhow, to read more about John's thoughts on one possible future of search engines, see here.