The problem isn't Google.

The problem is that people want a "free internet" without ads, and without any form of data harvesting. But they also don't want to pay any money, because the internet, as we all know, "is free".

In 30 years, no one has figured this out. So I feel pretty confident in stating that it's either gonna be ads or payments. And if we switch to a payment model, then the internet becomes another system where the poor are naturally disadvantaged and the rich get unlimited benefit, so I don't think any of the complaining will go away anyway. Just a new set of problems.

Actually-free gets suppressed by free-with-ads. We don’t know how much the truly free hobbyist-volunteer ecosystem would pick up without competition from ad-supported options (often with deep pockets for advertising and promotion, plus monopolist positioning to cross-promote with other products in some cases). Ad-supported options suppress usership of truly free options, which suppresses interest in volunteering time and resources.

It also suppresses open protocols. Protocols stagnated as the Internet centralized and commercialized for a reason. Some of these things could just be protocols.

Not saying that would cover everything, but I am sure those two factors would “step in” to replace some aspects of the ad-supported Internet, if the ads went away. How much, I don’t know.

> The problem is that people want a "free internet" without ads

Just run an ad blocker and be done with it. The business model of the website is not my problem; if websites cannot cover their costs without printing ads that I do not want to see, then they will disappear. We will be left with websites that are actually useful, for example businesses operating a website to sell things, or that are funded through donations (e.g. free software).

> So I feel pretty confident in stating that it's either gonna be ads or payments.

I'm assuming you mean exclusive disjunction here, but in reality it's something closer to a conjunction, if not occasionally an inclusive disjunction. So many subscription services also have ads and if they don't, they eventually do.

The problem isn't that people want things for free; hell, we all pay for access to the internet already. The problem is a shit-ton of monied interests want to squeeze every possible dollar from people always. So we're slammed with ads and our behavior is manipulated and tracked and monetized and sold.

This was not how things were on the internet or the web in mid 90s. It was not the ethos then, but it became the ethos when monied interests took over.

Critical services like email and search should be treated as a public utility. Those cost money as well, but are affordable to almost anyone, and social safety nets should be taking care of those who don’t.

I agree.

20-something years ago, when I paid for my internet connection, I also got an email address (or 5…) and some personal web space (5MB maybe?) and access to their NTP servers as part of that. No ads.

Of course if I left the ISP I would lose access to it, as I stopped paying for it. I’ve long since left the ISP, and they’ve dropped all these value adds.

Presumably because people wanted cheaper plans and jumped to other providers which did internet access and nothing else.

There are people willing to pay a reasonable amount for fair services. I pay for various Google and Apple services, including for email. Those that don’t, have ads based plans.

But some of Apple or Spotify Premium's recent moves Re: advertising show that even those who _are paying_ end up getting the ad experience eventually.

The old "If you aren't paying for a product, you're the product." adage doesn't apply anymore when even if you're paying, you're _still_ being productized.

The real problem is increasing concentration of _everything_ into ever-fewer (viable) players.

Doctorow's book "Enshittification" goes into way more examples of this phenomenon (though I'm far less optimistic than he is about the ability to reverse this trend).

The options are ads, pay, or public funding. Public funding is obviously the best option in many cases. For example, non-profit basic internet services

Status and control are a currency too.

I worked on open source because I enjoyed the work and because it had control over the final result. Other people did it because of status it gave them in the community. There's plenty of people willing to work on something for "free" (no money) as long as they are compensated in other dimensions such as ownership, status, control or simply enjoyment.

UBI could help here too, since those people still need to eat. Or, society could admit how dependent it is on open source work and pay maintainers and contributors from taxes.

The issue is obviously that most people don't even know what open source is so it's not an interesting political debate topic.

The internet is not free. Somebody is paying for those ads. And this somebody is us, collectively. And you know what? We are paying more than if we would pay for these services directly, because advertising companies are taking a cut. And on top of that we are paying with our data.

I pay for Kagi primarily for this reason.

I think I get more than $10/month of value out of search engines, and I would rather give money to a company instead of them selling all my data and/or spamming me with a bunch of advertisements. If I am paying for something, then almost by definition the company has a means of making revenue that doesn't require ads.

I hate self-promotion but I wrote about this a bit ago [1], but the TL;DR is that I think people are actually more willing to pay for things if they actually like those things. Something Awful has fallen out of favor now, but for awhile people were happy enough to buy an account because Something Awful was fun to be on [2], and a one-time $10 fee wasn't enough to "exclude" anyone, but it did become a way to support the site in the process. I don't think this model was or is broken, I think SA fell out of fashion because Lowtax stopped caring after a certain point.

Kagi has been growing; I don't know if it's profitable yet, but it has been steadily growing an audience and regardless of your opinion on this specific service, I think this indicates that people will pay for things. At least some of us will.

[1] https://blog.tombert.com/Posts/Personal/2026/02-February/Peo...

[2] It actually still is! I bought a new account about a year ago and I had forgotten how funny a lot of the posters actually are. It's a blast.

> But they also don't want to pay any money, because the internet, as we all know, "is free".

I pay ~$150/month for internet itself. I pay close to $90/month in internet services and media. I have coworkers spending hundreds each month on multiple AI subscriptions just because they have a better product for their work than Google. If tiktok and reels cost money then people would be ripping copper wire out of street lights to pay for it.

There are so many locked platform that I struggle to understand the not paying part. Imagine a better Github Search (or ACM search for papers), I bet it would find users.

> And if we switch to a payment model, then the internet becomes another system where the poor are naturally disadvantaged and the rich get unlimited benefit

As opposed to the current system where everyone is disadvantaged and the rich get richer?

Every business transaction in history has had a producer and a consumer, where both parties are in direct contact. Advertisers, on the other hand, insert themselves in the middle, promising to help both sides, while actually being a leech without doing any of the work. It is a despicable industry based on psychological manipulation, responsible for countless deaths, the corruption of every form of media ever invented, and of democratic processes throughout the world.

Sane business models are possible on the internet. Some of them exist already. But it's too late now for any of them to gain traction when advertisers are the same corporations that control it, and they have convinced the world that their products are "free".

1: If given the choice between ads or payments, megacorps will always choose both. If the choice is between ads or payments or data harvesting, megacorps will always choose all three.

2: We pay for access to the internet. It's on the provider to decide whether or not that level of access is sufficient. If it is not, restrict access only to those who pay more, ala Netflix/Hulu etc.

If I choose to put a publicly open service up onto the internet, and people choose to use it, that shouldn't automatically entitle me to spy on them, shovel ads down their throats, track their every movement and human connection, and then charge them for the privilege.

If I found out there was a person I knew who was doing that, I would at least chew them out and exhort them to stop being a worthless piece of shit, if I didn't kick their slimy asses for doing it in the first place.

I'm ok with ads existing. I'm ok with paying for services that charge for their services. I am not and will never be okay with data harvesters, and if I ever meet one I'm going to tell them to their face that they are shit people working for a shit company doing shit things to innocent people and that they should be ashamed.

If I meet someone who puts ads into paid services, I will do the same.

In the meantime, I'm doing everything I can to cut those pieces of crap out of my internet life.

Government can subsidize the poor. Remember Obamaphones? Just expand that idea.