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http://www.macnn.com/articles/01/06/04/zdnet:.the/

ZDNet: The end of the Free Web?

updated 06:45 pm EDT, Mon June 4, 2001

 
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In "Free Web: its days are numbered?", ZDNet ponders whether the age of free content on the Web is coming to an end, as dot-com companies discover that providing free content and services is becoming increasingly more difficult to maintain as a profitable business strategy. "...the introduction of charges may fundamentally alter the course of the medium. This evolution could create a new kind of digital divide linked to one's ability to pay for information and services, giving rise to virtually gated and balkanized communities throughout cyberspace."


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    06/04, 06:58pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    Charging $ = No Customers

    One of the main reasons use the internet is due to the fact that it is free. Charging money will drastically change the way the consumer will use it, if at all!

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    06/04, 07:06pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    evolution

    I think that if that ever happened, the internet would probably split - there would be the commercial internet and the academic version. This would not necessarily be a bad thing - it is incrediblt time consuming to search through endlessly irrelevant articles when doing research online.

    Another scenario is that a lot of the really inane things on the internet would vanish and no one would be the worse for it.

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    06/04, 07:07pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    It'll never work

    There never was a profitable business strategy in 99.9% of the web start-ups. Just because they failed doesn't mean we are now suddenly going to pay explicitly for the information. They were hoping to get paid by some means, which would ultimately have come out of our pocket anyway.

    There were lots of cool ideas being tried on the web by people who had less than zero clue of how to run a business. If any of those failed things will help some viable company gain a competitive advantage, they will be exploited.

    The long view is always bottom line. What makes it bigger. Free information is like honey to a fly and will always be used to advance the bottom line. The likelihood some company will be able to charge the general public for information for it's own sake is actually a quite limited market. So probably not profitable, and therefore a stillborn idea.

    ZDNet is just fanning an imaginary fire.

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    06/04, 07:08pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    Was free & will be again

    The Internet was founded as a free service for its users and it will always be thus, irrespective of the wishes of a few.

    This medium has essentially no cost of entry. Therefore, it will always be possible for someone to provide at no charge anything that a hopeful vendor wants to sell.

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    06/04, 07:10pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    This is no change

    Many of the things worth having on the Net already require payment. For example, a specialised medical-oriented web site that I would like to get for free costs $40 a month. It is a good site and the info is worth it.
    Another site offers information but only as an extension of membership of the association.
    For those whose tastes run to p***, that too costs money.
    In all of these examples, the free equivalents can be found but it can take longer to track down what you want and the results aren't always (in my experience) that good.

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    06/04, 07:15pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    Who is the competitor

    "Therefore, it will always be possible for someone to provide at no charge anything that a hopeful vendor wants to sell."
    As long as there are people willing to provide good info for free (well, at a cost to them actually) then people won't have to pay. It's only when the gap widens between the quality of the free and the quality of the subscription-based sites that there will be a change.
    The ZDNet hacks have two groups of competitors: in print they are competing with other magazines which also must be paid for AND you get all the ads. Online, they are competing with people who do the work for the love of it - many of them are of a very high standard. If the standard of the free content drops markedly, or if the pay-for sites can offer something better, then people will outlay the cash. Until then...

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    06/04, 07:27pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    Re: Was free & wil be aga

    "This medium has essentially no cost of entry. Therefore, it will always be possible for someone to provide at no charge anything that a hopeful vendor wants to sell."

    Hardly. The medium.. which I assume you mean the fast high bandwidth physical lines providing access to the internet.. cost providers tens of thousands of dollars per month to serve each non-paying end user with a single dialup connection.

    The situation is directly analogous to free television... in fact they're uniquely connected. Television stations which sustain their business through advertising revenue alone are in fact in competition with the internet. It may be that one day the Internet becomes more popular than television and companies seeking advertising space will provide a revenue stream for Free Access services like FreeServe. But for now television remains emensly more popular than the internet and I doubt that any Free Access service can susstain the revenue flow required to pay those tens of thousands of dollars required each month to keep their non-paying customers online.

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    06/04, 07:32pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    Free?

    Don't most of us already pay just to get on the web? How is that considered free? It's sad though, the more the world becomes digitized the more we pay for everything and the greater the divide between the "haves" and the "have nots".

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    06/04, 07:32pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    Remember Free CB Radio?

    ...When cell phones came along CB's became extinct(well, almost). I remember the "CB Craze" and everyone also said it would and should always be free...And so it will be with the internet. For all you "digital truck drivers" there will always be a free internet with limited features and security while the "next internet" will be packed with awesome features(which of course the business consumers will be more than happy to pay for). For those who have eyes to see and ears to hear: "the internet is evolving and it's gonna be awesome(but not free)".

    --Mike

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    06/04, 07:45pm | report spam | Reply | delete

    the Net was never free

    The Internet was never "free", only perceived to be so. We pay for the machines on our desk, we pay for the modem or DSL access. What was imagined to be was free was web-site content and find some information, like going to a library without having to start up the car, getting on the bike, or walking down the street. Those who've been arguing about the Digital Divide have long recognized this.

    The model that has worked has been AOL: It provides a service and the content. For a long time you were limited to THEIR content. The merge with Time-Warner is all about getting content.

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