Hearn claimed that there are two ways to fund services: through advertising, and through direct user payment. This is wrong. There are plenty of other ways to f

Hearn claimed that there are two ways to fund services: through advertising, and through direct user payment. This is wrong. There are plenty of other ways to fund services. You could fund them indirectly, through sales of another product. Think about Apple giving away its software and Web services (funded by hardware sales), or Microsoft giving away its Web services (funded mostly by software sales), or even of Google's nonprofitable services and projects (the ultimate income source here is ads, but it needn't be). Alternatively, you could accept some anonymous form of payment. Bitcoin is the obvious one, but there are plenty of others -- gift cards come to mind, and these have been pretty successful for iTunes and the XBOX arcade. Or, of course, there's cash, Bitcoin, and other less convenient or mature technologies. Finally, the argument is a little disingenuous, given Google's push, with Google Plus, to know people's real identity anyway. It is clear that "advertising = better privacy" isn't a Google goal, at the high level.