Those damn ads- they're what drove me away. It's not the idea of ads in general, it's the invasive way they place them.
Google has a beta hosting program - free with a few text ads. The upside will be that they provide gigs of space. Why offer sites, you ask? That's how they're linking together all of the stuff a person creates in Google docs and in the soon to be operational photo-hosting online software. This site has promise - once it gets out of beta.