[userbinator]

I often wonder what the internet would be like without ads.

It's simple, think of all the completely-non-ad-supported sites you've used, and imagine an internet where those are the only ones around. Basically that would largely be sites hosted by the government, companies (whose profit comes from something else), educational institutions, nonprofits, and individuals.

From my experience, I've seen a lot of great content on non-ad-supported (mostly personal) sites.

Stackoverflow in its current incarnation would likely not exist, but I'd guess something similar would appear in its place. P2P systems might become more popular too. It's hard to say but I doubt such an internet would really be worse than the one we have today - it would just be different.

[thesteamboat]

Wikipedia doesn't have ads -- it follows fundraising/donations model of NPR which is far easier to bake in to relevant content. In a world without ads, this might be a model for Stackoverflow and other largish sites with largish communities.