On the same subject, does anyone else think that as the internet becomes an increasingly integrated part of our lives, we will be asked to pay more for it? Right now, it's simply the cost of the ISP and that's free for many people. Wouldn't the addition of user fees for Yahoo, MSN, Bloomberg, BigCharts, etc. be a reasonable modification to the current way the internet infrastructure is funded?
I'm thinking as a MSFT shareholder here and not an internet user, of course. I'd rather see all of this remain free, but as a MSFT investor I'd like to see them start charging for use of the various services.
Just throwing this out there. Does an extra $30 per month fit into the typical users budget? Maybe $12 for the MSN sites, $8 for Yahoo, $3 for Bloomberg, and so on and so on. People would sign up for the sites they prefer and keep their budget within a certain level of comfort. This would weed out many of the smaller sites that are trying to exist on advertising alone, or they would be bought and incorporated into the larger sites.
There are millions of people visiting and using MSN. I'll look into the recent numbers, but what if there were 20 million people willing to pay $12 per month to visit MSN sites (no matter which ISP they used).
Another $2.9 billion in revenue for MSFT without adding to their cost structure all that much? What if someday there's 50 million or 500 million people that want to access MSN's sites and pay some sort of fee?
Maybe I'm way off base, but maybe not. Anyone have an opinion?
Dave
PS. The revenue I'm talking about is in addition to the subscription fees they get for the MSN ISP service and the advertising fees they will continue to recieve. |
