No such thing as a free lunch

Ultimately, though, every business needs revenues—and advertising, it transpires, is not going to provide enough. Free content and services were a beguiling idea. But the lesson of two internet bubbles is that somebody somewhere is going to have to pick up the tab for lunch.

writes the Economist as it reflects on where we are now with regard to sustainable business models on the web.

In taking us back to the first dotcom boom it reminds us that back in 2001,

the idea got about that there could be such a thing as a free lunch, or at least free internet services. Firms sprang up to offer content and services online, in the hope that they would eventually be able to “monetise” the resulting millions of “eyeballs” by selling advertising. Things did not work out that way, though, and the result was the dotcom crash. Companies tried other business models, such as charging customers for access, but very few succeeded in getting people to pay up.

So here we are again eight years later and the internet has still not learnt the lessons.

We hope that someone will come up with a model that will work but are not closer to that goal thatn we were at the turn of the century.