You might see the other direction happen too. Surely Google understands the disappointment for their end users clicking a search result and landing on a teaser paywall article that has less content than the search snippet.
ISTR that was seen as huge leverage for a long time.
If people were hitting a hard paywall, Google tended to penalize the result. A lot of sites ended up with a looseness in the paywall basically to ensure people landing from a search result got "first page free" style visibility.
I feel like the key is to realize the difference between "news" and "editorial" content. A lot of "news" is begging for a race to the bottom-- I can get the latest Covid numbers, sportsball score, or the fact a water main burst on 12th street from 5 local TV channels or two or three newspaper-format sites. You can't really compete by providing a premium product for those things. On the other hand, the editorial content-- the op/eds, the bespoke columns-- that's where you can justify a paywall.
