Did you experience the internet before ads? If not, you might be surprised by how rich the experience was.
I started using the web around 1995, so I guess that depends on what time period you are referring to. I certainly didn't use it before the first graphical browsers appeared!
I guess my point is things like Gmail, flickr, last.fm etc would struggle to exist on subscription only. Perhaps we can do without them all though?
Also, I agree with the poster below with regard to finding content these days, it can be tedious. A search on a subject can find pages of aggregators, e-commerce sites and little in the way of true content. I don't find this the norm, but it happens.
Flickr does exist on subscriptions only.
"Unfortunately the web as we know it would largely not exist without advertising revenue."
That is my point. I liked it a lot more before the commercial web took over. Once, the web was 99% content. Now it's a real effort to find anything worth reading.
> Once, the web was 99% content.
If you call your average vanity page "content", then sure, that's true...
If there were no advertising on the web, I can't help but feel it would still be nothing more than a large internet newsgroup/forum without much that makes it the rich experience it is today.