[ziszis]

What depends on ads?

Top sites and apps: Facebook, Google, New York Times, Gmail, Podcasts (that are increasingly ad supported), Google Maps, etc. Most of the content that trends on hn. Long tail of content that lets you get an answer to just about anything on Google.

I think some of these would be missed.

[malsun]

There's also services like Blogger, which I don't think have advertising, but since Google is probably the biggest player in the ad industry then I guess its existence relies on ads. Even web browsers like Firefox indirectly rely on ad money.

[jlarocco]

All of those services would do just fine charging for their service if they had to. Especially if their competition started doing it too.

I was referring to all the shit that wouldn't survive, like blog spam, scam/malware parked domains, etc. That crap makes up a huge part of the Internet, and nobody will miss it.

Web advertising is on the same level as spam as far as I'm concerned. They both depend on gullible and ignorant people who don't know any better clicking through. Just look at Google search result ads today vs 5 or 10 years ago. It's harder and harder to tell the difference between ads and results because they need to trick people.