I understand the additional points such as automated validation and the open records, but you can get free SSL certificates through StartSSL. The companies who don't want to pay for an SSL certificate (or do the research to find a free one) are most likely using shared hosting or some kind of managed hosting that costs extra to enable the SSL certificate anyway. So if they aren't going to pay the money for the cert, I can't see them paying extra per month to enable the free cert on their hosting.