UK newspapers `The Times' and `The Sunday Times' today began charging readers for accessing its website, as the titles owner, media baron Rupert Murdoch fights to end the era of free online content.

Having successfully used paywall to his two financial dailies, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, Murdoch aims to repeat that success with The Times newspapers, although a similar gambit by The New York Times in 2005 to make readers pay for opinion and comment pieces came under heavy criticisms and the paper was forced to scrap it in 2007.

Murdoch, chairman of News Corporation, had said in March that he would begin charging readers for online versions of The Times and The Sunday Times newspapers from June, in a move designed to spur other publishers to shift away from free news content on the internet. (See: Murdoch's News Corp to charge for Times online content from June) 

News Corp will be charging an introductory offer of £1 per day or £2 for a week for accessing the two newly designed sites, while subscribers to the print versions will get free access. The amount will give subscribers access to both sites.

There will also be a separate £9.99 a month charge for its iPad application.

The company had said that apart from The Times and The Sunday Times, two other British papers of News International, News Corp's UK subsidiary, the Sun and the News of the World, will also move to an online pay model soon.

The Sunday Times has a print readership of 3.2 million, while The Times has 1.7 million.

The Times paywall will also affect internet giant Google, as users will not be able to search for articles from The Times and The Sunday Times websites. Google will be allowed to use only those articles that have been specially made available by these two online sites to all readers for free.

Since the past month, both sites had asked users to register with a username and password if they wanted access to the sites, and according to Experian Hitwise, last week's data showed that The Times lost 18 per cent of its visitors as they refused to register.

UK users are already saying that they would not pay to subscribe on The Time, when they are able to get the same news for free on other web news sites like the BBC, Guardian and The Telegraph.

Online income for newspapers has failed to offset plunges in revenue from advertising in print publications, pressuring the industry to break from the free-story model that has been the internet norm.