Techdirt
http://techdirt.com/articles/20071121/083858.shtml
and J. Lanier
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/opinion/20lanier.html?_r=2&ref=opinion&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
from New York Times talk about internet strategy and how to create revenue in the web.
There is a trade off between generating revenues with free content and ads on the one side, and on the other side micropayment which are on the radar since years but are still not established.
In my opinion micropayments are not going to succeed in the end due to the several possibilities getting free content on the web. Also if all companies start introducing micropayments for the offering or in general for information it would be everytime an attraction for a vendor to deviate from this position and building a monopoly in a market niche with free ad based business model.
So if ad based models for virtual content is the future all real products should get more expensive. You can see this in music business. Since napster started 10 years ago the revenues from selling cds break down and so the price for attending a concert increases every year. Also DRM is no final solution. As you could see Amazon uses this to attack itunes etc. with lower prices and without DRM.
If this art of acting in the business is comparable to other solution we are going to see increasing prices for real products in the future. The revenue from these products are athwart subventions for the freee information in the net due to the thing, that the costs of marketing in the web and so the free web inforamtion have to be paid with this revenues. So there is a significant dependancen between survival of the internet companies which offer free content and traditional business. Also consulting companies, and in general, service companies could benefit because they are not directly involved in this business and could create higher margins with lower costs of prodcution and selling their products. Enough for the morning. Time for lunch…
