Free. Or is it?

In Chris Anderson’s book “Free,” he discusses freeconomics, which is the practice of giving things away for free bundled up with other things.  For instance, if you sign up for TimeWarner Cable for twelve months, you will get a free DVR.  It is basically a way for companies to get you to try their product by giving away incentives.

This model seems to have worked for years.  But exactly how well does it work.  We know that it helps to get exposure to new ideas and inventions such as in Gillette’s case, but what about across all industries?  Radiohead gave their fans the option to download their album, “In Rainbows,” for whatever price they choose to pay.  This model worked very well, and fans on average paid around six dollars per CD.  Radiohead, however, is a very well known band with many followers.  Would this model work with an unknown band or artist?  Would people even care enough to download their album for free let alone make a donation to the band to listen to the music?

Anderson also mentions many websites that offer free services, such as Google.  Google offers a search engine, maps and email, all free to the public.  These services are free to the naked eye, but I would argue that they aren’t exactly free.  While Google’s search engine gives us free results, those results are often rated based on which company has bid higher for the rights to the search.  The same things goes for Google’s Gmail.  If I happen to receive an email about a recently booked vacation in Florida in my Gmail inbox, an ad banner with hotel prices in Florida and local attractions will pop up.  Many of these websites also require that you give them your information to get started, such as name, age, gender, address, etc.  So my question is – is this really free?  If we are giving our information away and viewing results that were paid for are these services even though we may not have actually spent any monetary value on these services there has to be some value on what we are being forced to view and which information we have to share to participate.

Going off of the Google example, Anderson discusses GoogleDocs, another free Google service.  Anderson says that he no longer uses Microsoft Word since he has discovered GoogleDocs.  He cites the following reasons:  It does all that Word Processors do, it is available from all locations, it is stored at a remote, safe, location, so your computer can not crash and lose your work, multiple people can share the document at once, and of course it is free!  Before this program I had never used GoogleDocs before, and to be honest I’m not the biggest fan of the service, but I think that may be because I am so used to Word that it is hard for me to change services, no matter the benefits.  My question is:  will GoogleDocs be the new Word?  As big companies put out these free versions of otherwise expensive products will consumers move towards to free products?  Will everyone one day use GoogleDocs, forcing Microsoft to offer their service as free on all new computers?

Tags: free