You're being a message board geek, axod. If you have to pick your poison, and it's signing up for recurring credit card charge versus using Altavista instead of Google, I already know what your answer is. Google didn't have to be free; they chose to be, because given a spectacular product, they had spectacular freedom to find the best way to make money.
Hmm do you think they would have gotten so big if they hadn't been free from the start?
How would they have got the message out that they are better? Free trials? :/
Things that are "paid only" don't seem to scale quite as well.
Of course if/when a decent micropayment model emerges from ISPs, then it'll likely change everything.
