I think "free" is the most accurate succinct terminology to be used here, when used with it's most common definition. An ad-supported site/service can still cost money to use (e.g. Hulu Plus), so just referring to a site as ad-supported to distinguish the business model is no clearer than calling it free. The way to resolve this is to be more explicit, such as saying it's "monetarily free".

But we all knew what was meant, so why bother?

I am desperate for the time when my karma is high enough to down vote people who use "autism" as a means to condescend or insult.

In the meantime, I'll just politely ask: Please stop doing that.

You can flag a comment like that by clicking on its timestamp to go to its page, then clicking 'flag'. If enough users do so, the comment will be flag-killed. That's happened here.

Please don't post comments like this, though, which only dilute the thread further.

Yeah; Google seems to make quite a bit of coin off their "free" search engine and with their "free" maps website.

As for why bother discussing this: I don't think I'm alone in believing in a better B2C business model for the internet than "we'll get lots of users to spend lots of time with our thing, then make them look at ads". It's been said many times here before, but I'll repeat that it seems like a waste to have so many smart and talented people spending so much time on making people look at ads.