It sure looks that way:

Newspaper publishers will now be able to set a limit on the number of free news articles people can read through Google, the company has announced.

The concession follows claims from some media companies that the search engine is profiting from online news pages.

Under the First Click Free programme, publishers can now prevent unrestricted access to subscription websites.

Users who click on more than five articles in a day may be routed to payment or registration pages.

Considering Murdoch has gone after Google simple indexing their site and displaying the headline and the first few words, I don’t know if this would really be caving, but rather an attempt from Google to find a common middle ground. If Google stands by this policy then it would give them some extra ammo to fight Murdoch with.