Yeah, I know this argument - if ads are removed that EVERYTHING would be soo expensive and children in Africa are dying etc. etc. World is not black and white.

And by the way, please define "rich" and "rich enough".

A lot of small websites , phpBB communities etc are entirely ad supported because the owner may not be doing it as a money making exercise, the ads just cover the hosting costs.

The fact that results from these smaller sites show up in google searches (i.e not behind a paywall) is a good thing for the web in general as they often have good content, a few non obtrusive banners at the bottom seems like a small price to pay. If a site just bombards me with aggressive advertising I simply don't go back, these sites rarely have good content anyway.

I think that having access to free high quality information for people of modest means is a big net win for society at large, but maybe I'm just a socialist..

Small sites will just require small fee, one time or recurring. You see, we can't take all site, multiply them by some price and add all results to receive some ridiculous number and declare that man just can't pay that much. Because a single human can't visit all sites on the Internet, physically.

One individual has at most 16 hours a day for internet and if someone would estimate average times that the discrete number of sites to visit would be rather low. It is entirely possible (not 100% sure) that after initial shock communities will restructure a little, some really obscure sites with little unique content or services will die, but users won't leave. they'll just shift to occupy all the sites they really want to visit.

And right now I see that small and obscure websites are NOT findable in search engines. They don't do SEO and SMO, they are totally dominated by ad driven monsters they produce and produce and produce... well something. Sometimes good content sometimes not. Mostly not actually. I almost never find really good unknown stuff in Google&Co, only by direct links from friends and random people. Such sites are like dark matter of the internet, real but invisible knowledge. Invisible behind the noise from ad giants.

I don't know about you, but when I'm working, especially doing some form of research I can easily visit in excess of 40 websites or so a day and probably hundreds a month, having to pay up for each individual one could get expensive not be mention it would be a serious inconvenience. And how do I know if a site is worth signing up for if I have no idea of it's content?

Remember the site expertsexchange.com? The Q&A site that put their answers behind a paywall, now remember how stackoverflow ate their lunch with a few small unobtrusive adverts.

I actually do find plenty of useful content on small websites, phpBBs & blogs through google. Sites with unique content tend to rank well especially if you are searching for specific terms.