Yeah, there's not a law, but I think if we had started in any other model we'd've still ended up here.
Information is cheap and fast. This makes it difficult to charge for most content. The only way to do this and profit is to advertise. Competition among ad networks leads to ad tracking because it results in higher revenue for publishers.
Correction: only commonly available information. Want to get latest research of high value that is not a patent? Get double dipped by Elsevier. And IEEE. And ISO committee.
Or pay for good online courses.
Likewise with common services. Social chat app number 1001 has little value. Highly integrated with your business? Now you pay.
Unfortunately for news sites, their information is commonly available. Apps are fungible and it is easy to develop "good enough" nowadays.
There’s nothing about the technology behind the Internet that means that ad-surveillance needs to be its default business model, for example.
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