Ron Burr @ NetZero: The Coder Who Found a Way to Make the Internet Free

In the earliest days of the public Internet, if you wanted personal, at-home access, you were going to have to pay… a lot. That’s because early Internet service providers (ISPs) would charge people based on how long they were online.

For Ron Burr, these costs were more than just a money issue. Sure, Internet access was expensive, but, to him, there was another problem. He didn’t understand how people could charge so much money for something they didn’t actually own.

Recognizing this strange relationship between Internet access and Internet ownership, Ron and his co-founders started wondering if they could find some way of subsidizing the cost. Could they figure out a way to give free Internet access to everyone?

They didn’t have to look far for their business model. Radio and broadcast TV had been doing the same thing for years, and they were doing it by leveraging advertising. That led them to the idea for NetZero, the revolutionary ISP that gave free Internet access in exchange for showing you ads while you browsed.

For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.