I think this whole debate is curtailed by a misleading metaphor. Yes, certain parts of the web are free...these are the ubiquitous and dominant pieces, like Go

I think this whole debate is curtailed by a misleading metaphor. Yes, certain parts of the web are free...these are the ubiquitous and dominant pieces, like Google, Twitter, Facebook, and news sites, etc. Then you have SaaS, which is smaller on an individual scale, but makes up a large portion of the overall web economy. Most games aren't free. Some of my favorite pieces of software cost me money every month. Are we talking freemium here? I can't really tell because the argument, to me, seems generalized. Just yesterday on HN, there was a post about a fun project called threewords.me - it blew up because it was free and built to go viral on Facebook. That type of thing will probably always be free, either as an ad-supported simple product, or a feature of a more expensive paid product. I have a hard time believing that mobile will be free when much of the web is still not. The reason magazine apps aren't doing well is because they're complicated, and I can pull up wired.com and read almost everything I need to, from the same device, so an app is useless in that context. Other pieces of software, which might not exist outside of mobile, have much more value to me, and I'm willing to pay for that value.