[SquareWheel]

> They were just never given choice.

There was Google Contributor[1], which they tried three launching three different times before giving up on it. It seems like nobody was interested in paying to remove ads on the web.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor

[happymellon]

Reading your link, it basically launched twice, with the second time you couldn't even pay to remove adverts but you could bid as your browsed to drive up the price of advertising.

So you paid, and you still saw adverts, it was never available outside of the USA, and didn't last very long for each launch.

Not that people weren't interested. However this is the first I've heard of it, so there's that too.