Google First Click Policy is a promotional thing to get people looking at websites which generally require paid subscription. The way it works is by letting you click on an article via google search giving you one-off free access to that site's page, per day. Once you click on a link within the news website you will generally be taken to a pay-wall asking you to sign up for a paid subscription . Sometimes you can just right-click the link of the article you want to read, copy the URL back into google search and access it again via the results, but usually it will only give you access to the first click per day.

How to bypass this restriction? Various privacy add-on's may work, for instance Firefox's ghostery, or other cookie-blocking tools. Otherwise VPN or proxy tools to change your IP can work, but as mentioned, sometimes it's as simple as repeatedly using google search to access the article.

Why go to all this effort when there's many other free news services? Because Financial Times have been known to deliver some of the most up to date, non-biased and professional quality journalism in the industry. Take it from one of the most reputable and notorious media analysts in history, linguist and social critic Noam Chomksy, who happens to fervently disagree with the ideological underpinning of the financial industry and media, yet this is what he has to say:

“My impression in general is that the business press is more open, more free, often more critical, less constrained by external power and external influences... I guess that’s also true for the reporting in the Wall Street Journal and Businessweek, although the range of opinion that appears is different. So, for example, in the Wall Street Journal – and there are exceptions – but overwhelmingly the coverage is constricted and very reactionary, and the Financial Times has a much broader range, more terse, and I find it more instructive."

Check out the rest of the article here

Although FT.com probably love him saying this about their company, he doesn't necessarily want people to financially support them, I've heard him say in interviews not to buy the paper but to steal it, to avoid giving them money. So there you go.