Or is it?
There’s a lot of talk these days about “free” being the new business model, especially in the online world. But there’s actually nothing free about free. Chris Anderson of Wired Magazine says $0.00 is the future of business. As an example he writes, “Virtually everything Google does is free to consumers, from Gmail to Picasa to GOOG-411.” Don’t you believe it. Nothing is free, including Anderson’s book Free: The Future of a Radical Price
Aaron Wall gets it. Gmail may appear to be free, if by free you mean giving all your private correspondence to Google so they can create profiles on you for uses you probably can’t even imagine. Google Analytics may appear to be free, if by free you mean giving Google access to all your web statistics, sales numbers, etc., or until a Google remote quality rater has a problem with one of your sites and then decides to de-rank all of the sites in your profile. Google Analytics is not free, even if Google does say it’s “smarter, friendlier, and free”.
Facebook isn’t free either. Not only does Facebook want to share your private conversations, pictures, and videos, but there is also the issue of opportunity cost. Unless your time is worthless, everything you do has a cost. Facebook isn’t free to you, you are free to Facebook! You are Facebook’s “user generated content”…their free ride…if you let yourself be.
Free isn’t free for businesses, and it isn’t free for consumers. Businesses must pay for “free”, and for consumers of “free” goods, there’s always a combination of small print and opportunity cost. Nothing is free.
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