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The demise of a popular but unsustainable business model now seems inevitable IN RECENT years, consumers have become used to feasting on online freebies of all sorts: news, share quotes, music, e-mail and even speedy internet access. These days, however, dotcoms are not making news with yet more free offerings, but with lay-offsand with announcements that they are to start charging for their services. These words appeared in The Economist in April 2001, but theyre just as applicable today. During the dotcom boom, the idea got about that there could be such a thing as a free lunch, or at least free internet services. Firms sprang upto 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. Then it happened all over again, starting in 2004 with the listing of Google on the stockmarket, which inflated a new Web 2.0 bubble. Googles ability to place small, targeted text advertisements next to internet-search results, and on other websites, meant that many of the business models thought to have been killed by the dotcom bust now rose from the grave. It seemed there was indeed money to be made from internet advertising, provided you could target it accuratelya problem that could be conveniently outsourced to Google. The only reason it had not worked the first time around, it was generally agreed, was a shortage of broadband connections. The pursuit of eyeballs began again, and a series of new internet stars emerged: MySpace, YouTube, Facebook and now Twitter. Each provided a free service in order to attract a large audience that would thenat some unspecified point in the futureattract large amounts of advertising revenue. It had worked for Google, after all. The free lunch was back. | 
