Vivaldi co-founder: Advertisers 'stole the internet from us'
I don't want to dunk on a single out-of-context quote, and I'm sure that Mr. Tetzchner fully understands what I'm about to type as he seems like a brilliant guy. But blaming the current miasma on "advertisers" is so short-sighted.<p>The reason why everything is ruined by advertising is because <i>nearly everybody expects content to be free to the end user on the internet.</i> The money has to come from somewhere, so advertising it is.<p>Why does everybody want everything to be free? That's a more interesting question.<p>Is it because years of free broadcast television and radio conditioned us to expect everything to be ad-supported and "free?"<p>Is it because everything was sort of "free by default" in the early days of the internet because we hadn't worked out payment systems and such?