Beware of Freeconomics

Re:Beware of Freeconomics by mattmaroon on Wednesday February 27, 2008 @01:53AM (#124582)

That article, the article that inspired it, and numerous comments here are all wrong about one thing. Gmail didn't win. Yahoo Mail has almost 15x the customers, and over half of the web mail market.

  http://weblogs.hitwise.com/leeann-prescott/051007.png

My favorite quote, in reference to email services, "when Google made its move, Yahoo! could not compete." If being unable to compete means having a 15x userbase (some of whom are paying you, unlike your competitor, who has only free customers) then I sure hope every business I ever run cannot compete.

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Re:Beware of Freeconomics by paul on Wednesday February 27, 2008 @05:44AM (#124644)

I wouldn't trust that graph :)

Also, Gmail makes money multiple ways, including ads (direct and indirect) and paid customers of Google Apps.

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Re:Beware of Freeconomics by mattmaroon on Thursday February 28, 2008 @01:34AM (#125301)

Gmail is clearly a success. I just find it disingenuous to act like it did to Yahoo what Windows did to Mac.

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Re:Beware of Freeconomics by paul on Thursday February 28, 2008 @09:09AM (#125439)

Yeah, the fact that he chose Gmail as his first example of how free is somehow hurting consumers is rather telling.

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