[gpsx]

I don't think anyone likes advertising, but that does bankroll the internet. There are some great content providers on youtube who do that full time and make a living from it. Even many basic sites owe their existence to advertising because running a server is not free. But the joke in on the advertisers. Internet advertising doesn't work, or at least that is what I have read.

If we hadn't had advertising but instead came up with some micropayment formalism, I bet the internet never would have developed to be what it is today, even for today's content that is not ad driven.

[ghaff]

I don't know if it's actually a plausible outcome, but take advertising out of the equation and you probably end up with a significantly more limited Internet that's mostly accessed from institutional accounts (as was originally the case) and by individuals who are fine with a fairly expensive subscription fee.

ADDED: I do tend to think the commercialization of the Internet with advertising was probably inevitable, but someone could probably construct at least a vaguely plausible narrative around a less commercialized post-NSFNET world.