I don't understand the logic flow of this article. First it seems to place to place freemium & micro billing in opposition. I don't see why. Then it goes on to

I don't understand the logic flow of this article. First it seems to place to place freemium & micro billing in opposition. I don't see why. Then it goes on to describe all sorts of problems that might affect a freemium model. They can be annoying. There's a race to the bottom. There's the penny gap. paid subsidises free. All true. None universally applicable. Certainly none universally deal breakers. To pick on the last one I could give this analogy that applies to many kinds of freemium businesses. Whenever you buy your brand of toothpaste (that you have been buying for 20 years) you are subsidising advertising to new markets in countries you don't care abut. In other cases even that analogy doesn't hold because free customers do not raise costs. When finally getting back to microbilling, the solution appears to be some sort of universal easy micro billing service & a cultural shift away from subscriptions towards pay-as-you-go. Fine. Good. Works for iphone apps & mobile phone trivia, why not web apps? What relevance does this have for business models that rely on freemium? None. No such service exists at this point. The fact that the proposed solution is a universal one, points to the fact that WebApp companies shouldn't roll their own. I agree that micro billing is a good idea. I don't see what it has to do with freemium.