The future is ads everywhere, paid or free, doesn't matter. More revenue out of every user with little effort, shareholders love this stuff.
Though I guess it's no different than dvds having ads after you paid for them.
- Buying an $1200+ iPhone that doesn't come with an adapter.
- BMW charging you $10+ bucks per month to turn on seat heaters that came with your already expensive car
- Mercedes 0-60mph acceleration booster "unlock fee" for $1200/year
- Tesla woes with frequent "upgrades" locked behind paywalls.
- The ironic micro-transactions in Mobile games. When summed up, they are only "macro" with millions of bucks coming in every day. This has infested gaming outside Mobile as well. I'm not ever gonna touch console gaming again.
Craigslist has indeed done very, very well. They've maintained a useful service, ad-free, for decades. Made a ton of money doing it, too.
The reason the giants are giant is because they are driven to become giant by people and investors who want to become billionaires.