There are many services on the internet that are free or sold for less than cost. Yet the companies providing these services are profitable (at least some of them 🙂
What’s going on and what are consequences of this type of approach to the economy at large?
There is a lot to be discussed, uncovered and learned from studying this model. There are books on the subjects and I’m sure more will be more in the future.
First I will try to collect here some information and links to articles i found useful or interesting on this subject. After that I will try to make sense of it all … maybe i will come up with some suggestion at the end.
Articles, books or more on the subject
If you are not paying for it … https://lifehacker.com/if-youre-not-paying-for-it-youre-the-product-5697167
Not so fast … https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121219/18272921446/stop-saying-if-youre-not-paying-youre-product.shtml
More on the theme https://www.forbes.com/sites/marketshare/2012/03/05/if-youre-not-paying-for-it-you-become-the-product/#1bc8b145d6ee
Even Microsoft got into this issue (attempting to discredit google) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scroogled
Article about selling of aggregate data: https://www.cnet.com/news/unroll-me-heartbroken-caught-selling-anonymised-email-data-uber-lyft/