It was becoming increasingly incongruous for News International to talk about charging for all of its online content across all of its newspapers when one of those titles was thelondonpaper.
After all, the company could hardly start asking web users to pay for online access to a free newspaper's website.
While this was one of the straws that broke the camel's back, it was unlikely to have been the sole reason for NI to finally concede defeat and pull the plug on the loss-making free paper. In today's economic climate, harsh lights are being shone on everyone's business - and a pure ad-funded model just wasn't sustainable.
The closure initially begs more questions than it answers. What will London Lite do? It was set up as a spoiler to scupper thelondonpaper's development. So, presumably, its work is now done and it will close and Associated Newspapers can go back to concentrating on its profitable Metro free daily morning paper?
And what will the impact be on the London Evening Standard? Presumably it will be an opportunity for an already more youthful and semi-revitalised paper to sell more copies to the younger audience that embraced thelondonpaper's approach? Will the Standard continue to give away free copies after 7.30pm in the centre of London, which has worked well in recent months?
Then there's tfl's free newspaper distribution contract, which is currently out to tender. Metro is the incumbent, but it is likely to have far fewer competitors now.
Finally, could this be good news for good old fashioned daily newspapers, and will the tide turn back towards paying for them?
We've heard a lot about Generation Free in recent times, as thelondonpaper dubbed its new breed of consumers used to getting free content from a variety of sources - especially online. That generation hasn't gone away or changed its habits just because thelondonpaper has called time on its free experiment.
But perhaps it's time for the media industry to act as one and try and stimulate a "Generation Pay" that recognises the value in professionally produced, quality content and is prepared to shell out their hard-earned for it. Or am I just living in cloud-cuckoo-land...?
