The unnecessary necessity of information.
The presumptions made in this post boggle the mind. The first and most glaringly idiotic presumption is that any of these services are necessary in people's lives. They did just fine without any of these services 10-15 years ago and will do just as fine if they happen to be priced out of their want.
The second presumption is that the market will continue to favour content providers. With "content providers" being the correct choice of words used in completely the wrong way. Who provides content for Facebook? Its users, Facebook trades on the users information which the user gives up freely in exchange for use of said services. These factors will always balance out in the end and that is what will keep these services free to use. The above also applies to Google, Microsoft and to a certain extent even Apple. Without users none of these companies have content and in the case of Apple its closed system will not serve it well if consumers decide that sharing their data in a freely provided service is more attractive than paying through the nose for exactly the same bargain on their end.
The amount of control news agencies have over information is negligible at best. Paywall news sites provide exactly 0% extra news and facts that a person could not find elsewhere, this is an aspect of the internet that will never change as paywalls are most easily circumvented by age old word of mouth which in the age of information is a lightening quick source of rapidly assimilated knowledge about events which take place almost in real time. A great example of this is the fact that Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson knew about the death of Osama Bin Laden in advance of any official statement and had released that information into the public domain.
The article also presumes that there is an inherent importance to the content that these companies are providing, I fully believe I could get through the day and sleep soundly at night without knowing about what Ice T and CoCo and the Kardashian family have gotten up to that day. The services would need to start providing information of real importance to actually have any sort of real value. Any of the services mentioned in the article would not be world breakers if they somehow vanished over night and the general consumer is never going to forget that.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
