Still relevant 20 years later. People like predictably (it’s easier to budget) and use less of metered services. Hence bandwidth (phones and wired internet) went to bulk buys. There’s good data that people “irrationally” over purchase in bulk vs metered services (buy more minutes than they need) to avoid an unexpected cost.

Also with things like news you don’t even know if it’s I’ll be worth it until you’ve already paid.

In addition the tollbooth infrastructure is expensive. just look at how much of the old phone networks — hardware and bandwidth — was devoted to metering and payment.

So: bad for users and bad for business. Only really sustainable in a few early situations.

Ironic that the first time I made a donation to archive.org was through a banner above a page against micropayments.

Prescient. I wish for their success because my eyeballs sell for $0.01 per view in ad subsidy, and I would rather directly pay for the subsidy myself and skip the ads. But reflecting on the twenty years since this was written, I'd say he was on the money.

Sidebar, at $0.50 per view it definitely would not work, but I figure at $0.01 a typical user would run up a tab of about $2-5/mo, which is small enough that unpredictability is not a big deal.

What is the difference for a journalist between writing articles that users pay $X for each view and articles that earn $Y in advertising for each click?

Both ends up creating incentives for click-bait. Get users to read (aka pay) for as many articles as possible without any regard to any meat in those articles.

Short term thinking will always win in companies run by hired guns.

I never thought about it. Users do indeed hate them. I've never participated in a modern micropayment and intuitively _do_ hate them. He's also right that it doesn't matter why, but I really want to know -- lol. Maybe it's just the added friction between me and content I might have some blanket subscription for?

Aren't there examples against this nowadays? E-Scooters are payed by the minute, even though not provided by monopolists. Mobile games with in-app purchases are very similar to micro-payments, too and power a whole industry.

The monopolist examples, like mobile and power companies don't translate well, as these companies provide services, that are continuously consumed, vs. one of purchases. For these companies, micro payments maybe don't make sense. But for lot's of other one of content, micro payments seem far superior over subscriptions.

To me, it feels, the article proves, that micropayments are crap if used for the wrong kind of products...

there is a market for supporting content creators. most people dont want or cant afford to pay. of those who do and can, many would prefer to do so ad-hoc (vs subscription). offer them that power and i think you'd be surprised. just like a waitress who receives a $100 tip.