[Ankesh]

Thanks Duane.

A service like Gmail paper doesn't make sense because of the economics.

It would be very hard to get more than 10 cents per imprint of an ad. And it costs way way more than 10 cents to print a paper and then deliver it.

But there is a service started in India. Where you email your letter and send the postage + a small fee along. The co. then prints your email, adds postage to it and then mails it.

And the Indian postal service also offers this other thing: people can pay half price (I think its half price but not 100% sure) to send a postcard if its ok with them to show ads on the flip side of the postcards...

So ads are getting more and more intrusive. But I don't the economics are there to make posting completely free yet.

And rumour has it - that Google is working on making cell phone networks free - by sending ads to cell phones (I read that before April 1st - so am pretty sure it wasn't a spoof).