swa66 - 9:14 am on Jan 10, 2013 (gmt 0)

Essentially what free.fr was doing is extortion: Dear GOOG, we cut of your (advertising) income if you do not send us money.

It's all about net.neutrality in one way or the other as well: As consumers we pay our ISPs to connect us to the Internet, Publishers pay their ISP/webhosting. Simple, easy, done.
But some of the smart marketeers see money from the (large at first- but we'll all get hit by it is it ever goes in effect) publishers coming to the consumer ISPs in order to sustain their drive to grab more market share by promising less cost/unlimited use (-which is not sustainable in itself-).

I'm no fan of net neutrality as such, but I'm a big fan of getting what you pay for. Which means that I'm not a fan of having others pay for things I use either. E.g. I like my phone to be bought full price by myself (not sponsored), and have a cheap usage rate in exchange - replacing my phone when it pleases me, not when a contract ends. Same goes for my ISP: I like to pay for the stuff I buy from them - not have Google/Yahoo/netflix/whoever else they can extort in sponsoring my connection and usage.