What’s the Catch on Free Online Services?

Don’t you think it’s kind of funny that there are people who complain that the Internet has become too commercialized? While e-commerce has indeed flourished these past few years, free online services also multiplied like rabbits. There are many things in cyberspace that do not have a dollar sign for a tattoo. It would thus seem that charity is a rule or a virtue that’s etched in stone in cyberspace.

The email is probably the best proof that the best things in life are indeed free. Try asking for somebody’s email and he’ll very likely give you one that has a @yahoo.com, @gmail.com, or @hotmail.com extension. These three email service providers send and receive millions of emails everyday without poking their subscribers for money.

Free Hard Drives

Providing free Internet services, such as email accounts and social networking pages, is no joke. You’re terribly mistaken if you think that these services are given for free because they practically cost nothing for its creator. Take for example your social networking page. Your Facebook account probably contains almost a hundred applications and thousands of pictures. In a year’s time, the amount of data that you’ve stuffed into your page would probably reach almost a gigabyte already. Where do you think those files are stored? Subscribing to Facebook’s free services, then, is like availing of a free 1GB hard drive that you could access anytime and anywhere.

Is There a Catch?

Of course there’s a catch. Unless the people behind these online services have been inspired by Mother Teresa, they’ve probably figured out how to cash in on their charity work long before they offered their first free mailbox to the public.

Their primary source of income comes from ads. In case you haven’t noticed, advertisements of all sorts litter your screen whenever you open your email or access the host of your Web site. Ads bring in millions to Web service providers, enabling them to offer every netizen with a virtual real estate in cyberspace without executing a deed of sale.

Want More? Pay Up First

Free Web services often limit you to the basics. For many, though, the free stuff already provides for everything that they need. However, for those who already see or treat their email and social networking sites as life support devices, their need or addiction might probably force them to shell out a few bucks. Extra features and services are available, but they come at a cost. Additional mailbox space doesn’t come for free, and so do those extra weapons that you want for the online role-playing game that you’ve already become addicted to.

Don’t expect everything on the Internet to cost nothing. As with most things that are free, they are either limited or have strings attached to them that lead to your wallet.