[hardwaresofton]

My point was that if Google decided to change it's business model, and charged something like a $1 for a monthly subscription to using it's search services, it would be more than safe.

I don't think the fact that wikipedia produces it's own content is relevant, and whether it lacks curation being relevant either. Regardless of those two facts, it is immensely useful. The majority of articles, especially on highly technical/useful topics (like farming techniques) are mostly accurate.

Just because some may not be in a position to buy/afford something doesn't mean that everyone should endure inefficiency. Also, depending on the price, the truly important information would still be worth it. I don't think what's going to keep the less fortunate from using web services is a reasonably priced web service.

Currently, you can get a VPS for roughly $10/month, and a domain name for something like $70 (a .com usually costs this much I think). If you had monthly subscribers who were asked to pay $1 a month, the amount of subscribers to keep you in business (nevermind that today's tech can easily scale up to thousands of users on one box), is not high at all.