> much of the web I know and love will cease to exist
Which parts of the web are those exactly?
You'd be surprised at how creative people can get when their livelihoods are threatened by changing business models. Those who come up with a better solution for monetizing good content will survive. Those who don't, or who had poor content to begin with, will be forced out of the market.
The problem is, the changed business model will often be worse, because if it were better, we'd already have switched to it by now.
Look at the main alternatives – subscription is the usual other one. And subscription will probably be enough to keep the big sites like Google and Facebook afloat, but for smaller sites, they'd just go under. Not to mention subscription biases the wealthy – suddenly, the poor are locked out of a lot of sites.
Which parts of the web are those exactly?
You'd be surprised at how creative people can get when their livelihoods are threatened by changing business models. Those who come up with a better solution for monetizing good content will survive. Those who don't, or who had poor content to begin with, will be forced out of the market.