No free Internet lunch: the bubble long busted, Web sites turn to selling content to survive.

Business Mexico, February, 2004

Reviewing the latest report from the Online Publishers Association (OPA) covering online paid content, electronic information has all the looks of a hot commodity.

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Surfing around the reaches of the Internet, consumers spent US$748 million for content during the first and second quarters of last year, a jump of 23% over the same six months in 2002, according to the OPA.

Jupiter Research, an international research outfit, predicted that year-end figures for 2003 will show that spending on online content grew by 30% in the year--to US$2 billion from US$1.6 billion in 2002. By 2007, Jupiter says, payments for online content will be US$5.4 billion. Meanwhile, some newspaper chains with Web presence also offer rosy numbers....

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