John Pescatore

It has been entertaining watching all the hoohaw over the publication of Chris Anderson’s book Free – The Future of a Radical Price. First, it turns out that you actually have to buy the hardcopy version. But you can view the free version if you do it through Scribd (annoying), and soon you can get it for free if you paid $200 for a Kindle reader. Then, it looks like he copied stuff from Wikipedia verbatim into the book. Turns out free is complicated.

But, with Google offering free services all over the place, it is pretty clear that the most popular version of “free” means advertising-supported. This is a pretty traditional move for consumer-centric broadcast technologies as they mature. The content for radio and television was first put on the air for “free” to sell radios and TVs. Then, once the receiving device market was established, “free” radio and TV meant you had to listen to or watch commercials for approximately 33% of the time – to see 22 minutes of content, you have to view 8 minutes (or more) of advertising.

That’s a pretty big cost – think of all the productivity claims made for IT and PC technologies based on “user productivity.” In the broadcast TV world and now radio, “non-free” alternatives like cable TV and satellite radio have sprung up that largely eliminate ads for a monthly fee.  Of course, to make that model work, those technologies had to build security capabilities in and continually fight the battle of protecting their content – something advertising supported “free” services never had to worry about.

So, to summarize: “free” usually means advertising-supported, which means reducing the productivity of users and generally treating security as an after-thought, if at all. Which means that invariably, even if reducing productivity of users in the name of new technology is OK, there will be costs that needed to be added back in to make these services secure-enough for business use. Which is why Google Apps Premier Edition is not free.

It comes back to the wisdom of Robert Heinlein: TNSTAAFL – There’s No Such Thing as a Free Lunch. Or in an advertising-supported world, the wisdom of Fram Oil Filters: You Can Pay Me Now, or You Can Pay Me Later. Generally, paying later will mean that your customers will have been forced to pay, as well.