This article disappoints me because it seems to boil down to:
BAD: making money by selling software
GOOD: making money by selling ads
So how do you make money selling ads? By getting a bunch of users and auctioning off their private information.
I wish more people in the position to fund software development would support a model where your users are your customers and not just eyeballs to be sold to the highest bidder.
Barriers to entry are what capitalism is all about. (Real world capitalism, not the utopian capitalism from Econ 101.)
Patents, R&D, trade secrets, network effects, natural monopolies... all of these are competitive advantages that capitalistic companies want to have. It's the reason that "nobody else can provide what we do". Otherwise you're just trading commodities and you won't realize economic profits.
Now I'm not ascribing any morality to this. You can call it evil if you like. Just know that this definition makes 90% of businesses "evil".
Don't forget regulation. Complex regulation with a large compliance department to dot the i's and cross the t's is a great way to keep new entrants out. Why do you think there are so few new banks?
A better way to look at it is... If you put your users first, and create a site with enough utility and value to bring in a massive network of people..You'll be worth much more even if you have to start by monetizing with ads...but don't worry, eventually you can sell products and services between dentists and patients, dentist and vendors, and patients and retailers.
TL;DR put people first, your users are your defense. Monetization will fall into place if you have a network effect.
you left out the transactions part which is in the same sentence as the ads part. i would imagine, if this fable were true, that dentistry.com would make maybe 20-30% of its revenue from ads and 70-80% from transactions. that's about the ratio at Etsy. ads drive transactions so it's a good model for everyone.
I wish more people in the position to fund software development would support a model where your users are your customers and not just eyeballs to be sold to the highest bidder.