This is awesome news. We need the web to not be reliant on ads and also build the expectation amongst users that they need to pay for articles/services etc. just like how they would in the real world. This is the first step in doing both
They'll charge a fee and offer paid placement to brands. The ads will not be obvious, will just show up as prioritized over other listings. Maybe even routes will adjust accordingly to put you closer to advertisers. And you'll pay for the honor.
OpenStreetMaps doesn’t have paywalls. In sone things it is worse, in my day to day use it is better, the only thing I use gmaps/Waze/Amaps is for live traffic.
HN has neither paywalls nor ads.
Fastmail has a paywall compared to gmail - and I gladly pay it. There’s no ad supported option ttbomk.
The only two that don’t have a real alternative are the metcalfed Twitter and FB (and the live traffic feature in maps)
> Can't wait for [...] gmail [...] to have paywalls
With my mail service, I pay 1€ per month for my mailbox (on a pre-paid model where I deposit 20€ at a time into my account and get reminded when the balance runs low). That's a price that I gladly pay for the benefit of knowing that I'm actually the customer.
