The Economics of Free

Wired's editor-in-chief Chris Anderson is working on a new book, to be published next year, about the idea of "free" in the old and new economies. Wired is running a long excerpt from the book and some sidebars about the economics of giving away, e.g., CDs and directory assistance. Techdirt has a few quibbles about Anderson's ideas — mostly areas in which he may be shading the argument to sell more books — but mostly buys that the equations of economics continue to work when zeros are plugged in in judicious places.

Comments

Re:Well..

[flyingsquid]

I don't know about this whole getting stuff for free thing. I figure that if I just wait a while, then maybe the price will come down.

Re:Free as in beer?

[Anonymous Coward]

don't use free stuff because you might learn something, and that would be terrible.

The contents of your memory is finite.

The amount of knowledge in the world is essentially infinite.

It's best to stop trying to learn everything after you figure out that Grimace is the big purple dude.

Free, huh?

[Potor]

To get it, you must live in the USA. That's a heavy burden to get a 'free' magazine.

Hope you guys can fix everything with your election.

Re:nothing is free

[Anonymous Coward]

and support.. you are relying on the continued interest of a bunch of nerds. wtf happens when they discover girls?

Their hearts are broken. Their spirits are crushed. They retreat to their parent's basements to bask in the comforting glow of boxen and resume coding free software to numb the pain.

Re:A real use for Free

[AlXtreme]

To remind you all, advertising is not where the money is at. NewEgg, priceline, travelocity, amazon , each make more than x4 the money facebook/myspace digg/youtube/ or any large advertising space makes.

Yeah, you're right. GOOG isn't worth anything anymore and doesn't make any money.

Re:Free as in beer?

[mapkinase]

Linux is number one OS in science, in algorithms, in calculating stuff that matters. On Linux I verify genomic annotations, find distant relationships, parse scientific texts for data mining (extracting scientific facts). I code all of it too.

On Windows I submit weekly reports about hours and answer emails of people who are lazy enough to lift their behinds and walk 10 feet into my office, I write documentation that nobody reads, I waste my time browsing websites.

Linux makes me think. Windows makes me a slob.