Free: The Future of a Radical Price
by Volker Weber
Download the audiobook. For free. Or buy it on Amazon. Not for free.
Comments
Free seems like a nice price! how radical
REALLY good review of this by Malcolm Gladwell in the latest New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/07/06/090706crbo_books_gladwell?yrail
Bereits zu seligen Zeiten von Turbo Pascal 7.0 sagte mal jemand von Borland, daß die Programmiersprache ohne die Unmengen von Raubkopien unter enthusiastischen aber pekulär überforderten jungen Menschen niemals zu einer derartigen Popularität geführt hätte. Das Produkt war ein indirekter Selbstverkäufer, denn das Geld kam halt statt für Privat-Lizenzen durch Beteiligungen an Computerbüchern und Beiträgen in Zeitschriften wieder herein. Und wenn der Ex-illegale Programmierer dann beruflich programmierte, hatte auch jemand das Geld und das Gewissen, eine teure Firmenlizenz zu erwerben.
Übrigens scheinen diese Geschäftsmodelle wirklich nur in Zeiten des Überflusses zu funktionieren. Was passieren könnte, wenn die Ressourcen ausgehen, führt uns z.B. Andreas Eschbach in seinem lesenswerten Science Fiction "Ausgebrannt" am Beispiel Öl vor Augen:
Malcolm Gladwell missed the point entirely. The central question of Free is essentially how are people able to make lots of money charging nothing? “Free is not new, but it is changing.” Overall, I believe that Free does an admirable job of simultaneously admitting that the underlying idea of giving away something to make money somewhere is not new, and demonstrating that the way it is now being done is becoming entirely and unavoidably disruptive.
“All forms of Free boil down to variations of the same thing: shifting money around from product to product, person to person, between now and later, or into nonmonetary markets and back out again.” Free breaks this down to four types: Direct Cross-Subsidies (razors and blades), Three Party Markets (advertising), Freemium (Flickr vs. Flickr Pro) and NonMonetary Markets where participants expect things to be free, like gifts and, largely, music, but often giving something back that can be used to make more money.
The hazards of the change are worth considering. There are examples in the book where free has decimated entire industries. Google gives virtually everything away for free. Not counting, of course, its extraordinarily profitable advertising service. But the flip side is that Google gets extraordinary amounts of information back, to use as it pleases.
So how do you make money when what you create is free? You can see how, and a thorough review, at http://JimRea.blogspot.com
