Hidden agenda?
>"AffirmTrust plans to kick off its marketing by giving away three-year basic validation certificates for free. Extended validation certs will cost $450."
Sounds to me like they're trying to make basic (i.e., no) validation even more worthless than it already is, in order to boost the market for the supposedly-more-secure extended validation certs. Commoditize the complement and all that.
The flaw in their plan, of couse, is that a $0 basic validation cert doesn't actually offer your end-users any more or less guarantee of security than a $450 enhanced cert.
The non-flaw in their plan, of course, is that most big web hosts don't actually care about the security of their end-users, and most of their end-users don't know the difference.