he’s already looking at potential workarounds, whether that involves hiding content until people turn off their ad blockers (“But we’ll say it nicer than that”)

he’s already looking at potential workarounds, whether that involves hiding content until people turn off their ad blockers (“But we’ll say it nicer than that”) This does not sound like the type of thing a partner in a voluntary business arrangement does. It sounds like somebody participating in a mutually-antagonistic relationship. We live in a world where tens of thousands of app developers work hundreds or thousands of hours to create apps for various app stores. Most of these will never make enough to break even. It's a world where the average teenager can click a button and get a game to play for dozens of hours -- for free. If they don't like the ads, they can pay a couple of bucks and continue playing for dozens of hours. So, in this system where people trade this involvement of time for this small amount of money, what would the 5-minute experience of reading a news article be worth? A penny? Less? I'm thinking we're talking a tenth or a hundredth of a penny. Of course, for the publisher, it's a different equation, but we don't price things based on how much it costs to make them, we price them based on what the market will bear. The ad model was a great stop-gap for a couple of decades. It's time has come to a close, as it should. As hardware prices continue to drop, perhaps the next step will be advertiser-funded hardware -- with full ad-blocking enabled. Instead of "owning" the web property, advertisers will own the hardware that gets you to the web property.