"I assume you'd be paying some sort of subscription free for the pleasure of basically googling ads. Seems a bit backwards." Back in the day, many better mail

"I assume you'd be paying some sort of subscription free for the pleasure of basically googling ads. Seems a bit backwards." Back in the day, many better mail order catalogs cost money to receive. Mostly to offset the cost of mailing them out, but partially as a form of filter, on the theory that someone sufficiently interested in a catalog to pay to get it would be more likely to actually order something.