I agree but I suspect the choices are subscriptions or ads. As the Internet has matured the 'free' option is going away. Developers of course will be able to fund their own infrastructure (sort of a self subscribe model :-) but the 'free' internet is definitely going away.
I really don't see that, we still have a huge number of free application. Maybe google is having some issues (google reader and gmail) but you still have a huge number of alternatives that are still free.
Either way, Gmail is going down with things like that. Internet is one space where people can choose not to have ads, and nobody likes ads.