Clay Shirky back in 1997 –The Price of Information Has Fallen and It Can't Get Up:

"Once a product has entered the world of the freebies used to sell boxes of cereal, it will never become a direct source of user fees again.

[…] You might drive three miles to buy used baby clothes, thirty for a used car and sixty for rare coins. Thus, in the economically ideal classified ad scheme, all sellers would use one single classified database nationwide, and then buyers would simply limit their searches by area. This would maximize the choice available to the buyers and the cost able to be commanded by the sellers. It would also destroy a huge source of newspapers revenue."