One of the complaints against Angie's List was that it claimed it didn't depend on advertising even though it charged vendors for premium positioning. That's exactly how Google makes its money. There were claims Angie's List made most of its money off the vendors who paid for positioning. When I lived in MA, I met a couple of tradespeople who felt they lost business because they didn't pay for premium positioning. One was miffed at being asked to pay for positioning.
No doubt Angie was way ahead of her time starting her list on paper then transitioning to the internet when she saw the value of the internet. She probably isn't given enough credit for what she pulled off. She was one of the early people who made money off of "information pages" on the web, but giants like Google and Facebook overshadow her... but, at about the same time Google was getting started she had the same insight into what the internet was going to become and how to make money off of it.
BTW I was a subscriber to Angie's List for a while, but I never found it useful, but I'm sure others did.
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