RE: "Speaking even more broadly, it's very depressing to me how secondary the goal of building a good, useful or functional thing is subservient or at best orthogonal to the goal of making money."
This is what happens when things are "free". They have to make money somehow and "free" products typically have bad incentives (i.e. the company puts making money ahead of making the best product). One of the nice things about paying for news, TV (not cable, streaming), software, etc. is you are the customer and they company's continued survival depends on making you happy. In the short term, they can can do all sorts of crappy things to their customers (think Cable TV's high prices and meh content), but in the long term, bad behavior kills companies.
This is what happens when things are "free". They have to make money somehow and "free" products typically have bad incentives (i.e. the company puts making money ahead of making the best product). One of the nice things about paying for news, TV (not cable, streaming), software, etc. is you are the customer and they company's continued survival depends on making you happy. In the short term, they can can do all sorts of crappy things to their customers (think Cable TV's high prices and meh content), but in the long term, bad behavior kills companies.