Spotted in Scripting News:

Google's search engine cost nothing to use and had no ads for the first few years, and look at how well that turned out. Flipped around, I don't see why Amazon charges me to use AWS. I think I produce as much value for them as I use just by writing about it, but they haven't been willing to bend (not that I've asked them to). If there was no cost to it, I'd use their services for new things that I'm not willing to try as long as I have to pay. I know that because there are projects I've not attempted because the cost was prohibitive.

I think Winer needs to read Heinlein, and ponder the idea of TANSTAAFL. Google pays for their "free" services with ads. If they offered the kind of service Amazon does, and decided not to charge for it, it would mean ads - that's how they pay the bills.

So how would Amazon provide their services if we didn't have to pay? It's simple - they wouldn't offer them. At first, the service was a simple matter of trying to monetize things they were already doing for themselves. Over time though, as it started to get more popular, they had to start adding scale based on growing demand. So how would they support that in Dave's world? Servers, backup capability, power - none of this stuff is free. Here's a thought for Winer - maybe he should build the web services stuff he wants to see available for free, and just give it away. I'll let him figure out the economics of that on his own.

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