Possibly. But I remember the time of Shareware, especially on the Amiga platform. It seemed that every little itty-bitty utility program on the Amiga cost some small amount of money. Meanwhile, all the popular programs on PC (DOS and Windows) and Unix (Sun etc.) were mostly GNU-style free software, and guess who won that development? I’m worried that the entire currently-free web will stagnate by all web sites feeling forced to adopt this pay-by-the-click model.

However, you are certainly right in that the current ad-supported model is driving engagement, or, should I say, “enragement” clicks, which is certainly not doing much good.