Thoughts.com Blogs - Free is finally...Free?

It amuses me how much stuff is free out there, what amuses me even more is that in our money hoarding society this stuff actually is completley free to us. Not one of those: "Here's a free phone, and now give us fifty bucks a month to use it" scenarios, but truly free.

I mean why pay to use any microsoft e-mail program when you've got Mozilla Thunderbird for free. Or need to upgrade your internet explorer? Don't pay, use Mozilla Firefox.
Does your office run on Office 2007, but you have an older version at home? No problem, use google Docs.

My absolute favorite is Goog-411. Normally when you use a 411 service you're charged anywhere from $.75 to $1.75 for the call, Goog-411 is completley free beyond the general costs to use your phone.

The big question is why is this stuff free?
In essence it isn't really, but it is to the specific user. Why? Because the companies producing the free stuff is selling us to the advertiser, so the advertiser pays for our free stuff.

For example Google is free to us right? You don't pay any sort of fee to type in "www.google.com" and use the search engine, right? This is because of all those adds you see on the side of your screen. Google sells us to those advertisers and therefore the advertisers pay for us to use the search engine.

Companies are slowly starting to realize that by giving stuff away to the consumer they can make money in other ways. But not just through advertisers. For example you can fly from Dublin, England to Barcelona, Spain for 20$, in relaity this ticket costs 70$ how does the company not lose money?

Charge people for other things of course.

Say you ONLY buy the ticket. You don't check baggage, you bring your own food, or don't eat anything, you don't have a kid with you...YOU are only spenind 20$.

Meanwhile another person is spending 30$ per piece for their five piece luggage set and they bought three water bottles at 3$ a bottle and they have a little kid who costs them extra....

See, that other person paid for you flight to Barcelona. Isn't that cool?

Anyways in short: The next time you visit a website with lots of add banners, don't complain, those advertisers are paying for your basic internet useage.

(YAY FREE DEVIANTART!)