I see people calling ether a coin.
Ether is a product, NOT a security or investment offering. Ether is simply a token useful for paying transaction fees or building or purchasing decentralized application services on the Ethereum platform; it does not give you voting rights over anything, and we make no guarantees of its future value.
It sounds to me more like buying a MSDN license. It supports further MS development, it doesn't buy you any stock or shares in the company, MS can sell an infinite number if licenses, and it is only really useful if I am a developer or user of an application based on their framework.
Sure you will eventually be able to trade the ether fuel with others later, but the supply is infinite and people will only need to buy ether if they are expending it (faster than they are mining it)
Edit : who is going to pay for it ? The video on their homepage gave the example of a decentralized Facebook. Are these FB 2.0 users really expected to mine or buy ether to use the service ? Or more likely the service will be free and ad sponsored. How many scenarios will there be where consumers actually need to burn ether ?
