Another post saying that web companies should charge their users instead of just relying on ads.
The meat of the article, IMO, is this paragraph: "This system breaks down, however, when products stop costing anything to produce. The cost of provisioning service to a single user of a site is effectively zero, close enough that it can seem worthwhile to give it away in order to expand your userbase. Unfortunately, in doing so, you lose the revenue stream which has supported businesses since the dawn of commerce."