Why do people prefer free over paid? I think people underestimate the influence of advertisers and underestimate the value of their own time spent researching and dealing with crappy products. It’s almost like a psychological bias.
I like the idea of a better user agent but would I pay for one? Judging by my refusal to pay for quality journalism I’m guessing it’d be a hard sell. That’s another thing I should be willing to pay for but don’t for some weird reason.
Plus the knowledge you can, and non-trivial technical expertise like: registering a domain, DNS configuration, setting up web software (even if "one click"), and maintaining it over time.
Do you have a link to this? I've tried googling "splicing a 500kW cable" (and variants) and haven't found much relevant.
I don't think this was an accident. Back in the 90's I paid for Netscape Navigator and for email. People used to even pay money to indexed by search engines (like paying to be in the Yellow Pages). Companies started "giving these things away" in a calculated move that I guess the nascent web population was just not cynical enough to reject.
We missed out on like 90% of what the information revolution was supposed to bring to users, and instead the data giants have captured all the value.