You may read the original article at http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=19552.Frankly speaking, I do not 'Absolutely' agree to what Barry Diller said, despite he is way more successful than me in the Internet business field. Well I do believe that more and more businesses with paid products and services will appear online gradually or even exponentially. However, there are still many websites which provide free contents and are able to make sustainable income from displaying advertisements on the sites. A few very good examples are Google, Yahoo, Youtube, Facebook, etc.
You might argue that Google and Yahoo do provide some paid products and services for the high end users such as business owners and professional webmasters. But think about it. What is the primary income source for Google and Yahoo? It's the search engine which is FREE for the end-users. They make most of their money from the advertising programs, namely Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing.
I really cannot imagine Google and Yahoo start charging people for using their search engines. If it really happens, other competitors will easily take over their current market share. Who would want to pay for using the search engine?
This is just my two cents. Anything can happen in the next five years since the Internet evolves too rapidly. What's your opinion?
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