The vast majority of google searches are certainly not all searching for things that would lead them to WSJ.
If we take just the population of the US in 2017 (326.5M), and assume every American searches via Google for their news, we're looking at give or take 1% of the US with the WSJ subscriber estimate you provided (~3M).
We can refine these numbers further...
19.4% of the US population is less than or equal to 14 years of age (18 would be better, but couldn't find) - so that gives 263M potential American news readers
That leads to at least 3% of US Google news searchers are potential WSJ subscribers.
So that's not a tiny number (yes the number could be adjusted for worldwide English speaking news googlers - but I think I've made my point).
How many of these subscribers are wealthy and coveted by advertisers?
What if more news publishers follow WSJ and you happen to be a subscriber of that content?
With the amount of information that Google has on its users, I don't see why it can't adjust search results based on whether or not you subscribe - and bring value to whichever side of the paywall you reside on.
If we take just the population of the US in 2017 (326.5M), and assume every American searches via Google for their news, we're looking at give or take 1% of the US with the WSJ subscriber estimate you provided (~3M).
We can refine these numbers further...
19.4% of the US population is less than or equal to 14 years of age (18 would be better, but couldn't find) - so that gives 263M potential American news readers
The Pew Research Center http://www.journalism.org/2016/07/07/pathways-to-news/ states that about 38% of adults in 2016 often get news online (~99M)
That leads to at least 3% of US Google news searchers are potential WSJ subscribers.
So that's not a tiny number (yes the number could be adjusted for worldwide English speaking news googlers - but I think I've made my point).
How many of these subscribers are wealthy and coveted by advertisers?
What if more news publishers follow WSJ and you happen to be a subscriber of that content?
With the amount of information that Google has on its users, I don't see why it can't adjust search results based on whether or not you subscribe - and bring value to whichever side of the paywall you reside on.