We already pay for the Internet. Well, most of us do. I pay US$11.25 per month.
The reason why Internet content providers are having a bad time recently is because most of them had what seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of venture capital. They were all trying to outlast their competition. They didn't charge enough for advertising.
Internet advertising will work after the shakeout settles down. It works for commercial broadcasters, newspapers and magazines (I get many trade magazines and papers for "free".)
Before Yahoo, and before the Intranets of the cyberspace, there was the Usenet and private individual web sites for FAQ's. And that is part of the ISP's, which as I said, most of us are already paying for.
Yahoo might try to charge for access to their discussion groups, but they will have to compete with the Usenet.
Created on Thursday, June 07, 2001 10:54 AM EDT by w j ward