It doesn't work very well, unfortunately. Those willing to pay usually are the most interesting part of the audience for ad providers, so it's difficult to compensate that loss by a reasonably priced 'ad-free' option. You probably would be surprised if you knew how much your attention may cost. Targeted ads created a market where everyone pays proportionally to their spendings. I'm not saying it's a good situation, but it looks like that's a local optimum rather hard to leave.
What bothers me is that huge companies are more resilient to tracking and ads restrictions, so that fight may further speed up centralisation of the internet. I would personally prefer the chaotic old-school world wide web with ugly flashing banners instead.
As a former employee of Yandex I totally disagree with what you said about 'not that good' developers and their loyalty.
It seems to me that the most common reason for leaving the company is immigration, which has nothing to do with Yandex itself. All my ex colleagues who left Yandex work abroad at Google, Facebook, MS and etc. Also I've seen many very good developers who cared a lot about their products. So my impression is somewhat opposite to what you described.
The OP doesn't seem to work there and seems like an outsider who thinks he knows how to run a company better than the people on the inside. This obviously misses a lot of moving parts and internal incentives (which yes may ultimately created a bad product). But I'd personally rather hear the experiences of people directly involved with the company.
I don't see anything wrong with training people on their tech stack either. That's not a scam, that's a highly valuable skillset if it gets you a job and experience. You can always learn other languages on your own, which is 10x easier after you know one.
It doesn't work very well, unfortunately. Those willing to pay usually are the most interesting part of the audience for ad providers, so it's difficult to compensate that loss by a reasonably priced 'ad-free' option. You probably would be surprised if you knew how much your attention may cost. Targeted ads created a market where everyone pays proportionally to their spendings. I'm not saying it's a good situation, but it looks like that's a local optimum rather hard to leave.
What bothers me is that huge companies are more resilient to tracking and ads restrictions, so that fight may further speed up centralisation of the internet. I would personally prefer the chaotic old-school world wide web with ugly flashing banners instead.