Google even has/had a rule against cloaking (the practice of serving search engines a different version of the page from the one visitors get).

This started with expertsexchange:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3182198

but unlike that stack overflow predecessor that attempted to build itself as a paywalled business, newspapers successfully strongarmed Google, at least in the EU, by arguing against Google monopolistic powers so it's unlikely that Google would dare put them in the shitlist.