Comment by locknitpicker

> No, I suspect that "I kind of think of ads as a last resort" was doublespeak for "ads are coming eventually".

I don't think so. Resorting to ads is an obvious step but one that profoundly degrades the credibility of the whole service. It's a pyrrhic monetization strategy, and one that's pulled when all other options failed. It's a kin to scraping the bottom of the barrel to extract the remaining bits of value left.

The reason why the statement was "I kind of think of ads as a last resort" is clearly because they were a last resort move. And here they are.