End is near for 'free' Internet

End is near for 'free' Internet

Vishnu K. Mahmud, Contributor, Jakarta

The writing has been on the wall for more than a year now and
some still cannot believe, much less accept, the idea.

Yahoo.com, the world's number one internet portal, has
recently announced that it will begin charging for some of its
free web services, in particular e-mail forwarding, and POP3
mail-client access.

In other words, if you have been receiving e-mail via Yahoo's
servers and downloading them to your computer with Outlook
Express, Eudora Mail, or other mail programs, you're going to
have to reach for your wallet.

Yahoo's web-based, e-mail service -- the one where you access
a special web page to read your messages -- will still be
available to users at no charge, however.

Although the cost of $29.99 per year (or US$19.99 through
April 24) for the mail-client service is rather reasonable, many
people must be cringing at the thought of paying for a service
that, until now, has always been free.

They most likely think that using the internet is getting to
be expensive in that they must pay for the telephone call (for
those using dial-ups) with its hourly internet fee.

Yahoo! is not the only one that has begun charging for its
services. Many raised their eyebrows last year when Salon.com,
the popular news portal, launched its "premium" content section,
with a subscription fee, while popular electronic greeting card
site Blue Mountain (www.bluemountain.com) recently began charging
users a yearly rate for sending out e-cards.

Why are so many companies now charging fees for previously
free products and services? The answer lies in the public's
perception that creating an internet site has no substantial
costs.

In reality, there are web site hosting fees, technical support
costs, bandwidth charges, along with a myriad of other expenses
to consider.

For content-producing web sites, the overhead costs include
journalists' pay, news-feed licenses, and office rental space.
Thus, if a company produces news content for free, how are they
going to pay for all those things?

Have you ever noticed the amazingly large advertising banners
on the side of a news site -- or those annoying pop-up (or pop-
under) ads or the large promotion graphic smack dab in the middle
of a news item? This strategic marketing placements are just one
of the ways web portals obtain revenue.

The user basically pays the web site for viewing their content
by downloading the advertising along with the internet page they
are reading.

But we are already doing this in real life, by listening to
the jingles on the radio and those 30-second ad spots on TV. The
difference is, it is on our cost. Downloading advertising takes
up time, and bandwidth on the part of the user.

Advertising and subscription services may not be able to fully
finance full-scale portal operations. However, the idea of paying
for what you use must be accepted as more and more services
utilize the expensive infrastructure of the internet.

Reading the news in your daily paper or watching TV is not
free, and is paid for in different ways. Some by subscription,
others by advertising.

More importantly, the internet community should not consider
subscription services as a cost, but as a value. Would people pay
money to buy a newspaper? Would they purchase a ticket to watch a
movie? Would they buy a CD to listen to music?

The answer is yes, since they consider them valuable services
that must be maintained through compensation.

If all news portals worldwide started to charge fees from the
beginning, we would have none of these problems.

It would be grudgingly accepted as another fact of life,
paying for what you need. But because of the punch-drunk days of
the IPO tech boom, and some questionable revenue streams,
providing free services has become the de facto default for web
portals, and news sites.

Looking back on Yahoo's services, is $29.99 a year worth it?
Consider this: Yahoo! is a publicly listed company that caters to
a rather fussy internet public.

They have a full complement of IT staff, and hardware to cater
to a worldwide user base that requires their services 24 hours a
day, seven days a week. And this user base will not accept any
downtime or excuses.

You can also access your e-mail from anywhere around the world
through its free, web-based service in addition to a host of
other services.

If we keep asserting that content and service must be free for
the user, the internet and its underlying services will never be
able to evolve and flourish.

New sites and businesses will never be able to get off the
ground because people will not be confident enough to want to pay
for the hard work of others.

In short, some things are just worth paying for.