>Might the real problem at the moment (availability of pay-per-use web services) be that MS hasn't yet delivered the metering/charging mechanism(s) to enable people to do so.

Possibly. Though, with Credit Cards, I don't know if its that big of an issue.

I don't think that the problem is in the technology, software wise its all there. Hardware wise, it will be here in 5 years, give or take a couple. The problem is with the consumers and businesses themselves. No one wants to pay for this stuff, not while its been free for so long. Take search engines, who would pay for a search engine Web service when you can get free ones with big banner ads in there. This applies to lots of sites that people are assuming Web services woudl work well for, News sites are another example. While this would be beneficial to the consumer, where does the company benifit?

I think its this banner ad thing that is really perverting the internet. It would be very impractical for Altavista or Yahoo to move all their content to Web services because they would have to charge for it, and noone woudl pay for it while there are free alternatives. Now take a look at Google, no banner ads, and in fact, the make their money (alot of it I gather) from selling search result positioning. This could very easily be moved to a web service, and I believe they would be succesful at it.

So the differnce between the two? It really comes down to practical, logical business models. You can't take a bad idea (like the .COM fiasco) give it a new technology (.NET) and hope it will work. Its still gonna be a crappy idea.

And the want "somethign for nothing consumer" is not a Web service specific problem. Look at the entertainment industry and the priating involved with music, now movies. In the future, music will cost several pennies a song and noone will complain, because the hugely distributed music will be makeing artists and executives money while the low price means lots more legal music for the listener very cheap. I think that Web services will go the same way. Its an evolutionary process. Your standard metering/charging mechinism may speed the process (I've considered building such services myself, though I don't think I'll go trhough with it) will most likely be a reality, though its not the solution.

So whats my point? My point is that while Web services are based on technology that we've always had, Web services (including, but not limited to .NET as well)are more than a technology, they are a way of thinking, an intiative. Today web services take our existing components/applications/ideas and make them open and easy to create. But looking ten years into the future I can envision some very amazing things with this technology, as soon as we as a people and our hardware are ready to grasp it.