KEY POINTS:
Isn't this Web 2.0 deal great? A bunch of dotcoms somewhere in the Valley of the Shadow of Silicon make these fantastic web services - for free.
Billions of dollars are being spent on an internet buy-up, the likes of which hasn't been seen since the turn of the century. Meanwhile, I've paid a total of US75c to Google's coffers only because I've accidentally clicked on one of the adverts on right-hand side of its search engine results. Has anyone ever actually bought anything by clicking on a Google ad link?
I swear by Google's free Gmail service, which gives me 2.7GB of storage for email. I host my web log on Google's Blogger, for free. I get hours of amusement watching music videos and news pieces on YouTube, organise my life via Netvibes, and the soundtrack to my working day comes from Pandora. I use ZoomIns maps to get directions. The cost to me? Nothing.
Which makes me a little nervous. Is the free ride going to end next year? Will Google all of a sudden ask me to stump up $10 a month to keep my Gmail account, or will I have to hand over my credit card to keep Netvibes active? I don't think so. The new way of the web dictates that if you give your services away, enough people will come on board to attract advertisers. It's a bit like spam email. Only a fraction of those receiving spam send replies, but it's enough to keep the spammers in business.
The "Freemium" model has certainly worked for Google, which made US$6.1 billion last year, mostly from advertisers buying space alongside its search engine results.
It's a slightly different story for YouTube, which has to deal with the fact that most of its users won't stump up for premium content and will drift away if they're bombarded with advertising. In fact, it's a slightly different story for just about everyone other than Google, the search engine king, a fact that has led many commentators to suggest that the future success of Web 2.0 services is dependant on the success of Google alone.
It's ironic that for most of us, the bulk of money spent on accessing these great new services goes on broadband bills, computer hardware and the Windows operating system _ not on the services themselves. Meanwhile, the dotcoms bend over backwards to come up with new business models, which in the case of music download service SpiralFrog includes giving songs away for free if you watch adverts beforehand.
Nothing will fundamentally change next year because a user-pays model would destroy everything that's been achieved on the web in the last two years. If anything, things will be even freer. This was the ultimate promise with Linux, an open-source operating system that was hyped as the free alternative to Microsoft's Windows. Its various incarnations so far haven't been able to draw consumers away from Windows, and with the release of Vista imminent, they probably won't for years to come.
But what happens when a player like Google builds a free operating system with the clout of Windows? A free operating system that interacts with all those free services on the web. It's the dream scenario for freeloaders like me, and if the web trends of 2006 are anything to go by, it will happen sooner rather than later.
