Having read and enjoyed The Long Tail I decided to pick up Chris Anderson’s new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price.  I didn’t really pick it up I downloaded it, for free, from Audible.  I was not disappointed.  I thought it  was quite interesting that I could get a book about “free” for free.  That’s putting your money where your mouth is.

It me be that I agree with Mr. Anderson’s thesis that the Internet has me it easy to create pricing models that include free and still make money.  Businesses have been doing this since there was such a thing as businesses.  Free samples readily comes to mind.  In FREE Anderson explores other ways that the Internet is making it easier such as the freemium model where large portions of a service offering are free for everyone, a kind of free sample, and a small number of users pay a premium for some advanced features.  Unlike a typical free sample that tends to have limited utility the freemium model offers good value for free.

I enjoyed the book.  My clearest take away from the book was that we need to start managing abundance and not scarcity.  If it’s online someone is bound to give it away for free.  Like it or not that’s going to happen.  You can fight against the tide or you can go with the flow.  Find a way to make money out of abundance rather than the limits of scarcity.

I’ve read a number of books on the rise of Google.  This book was interesting in that it discusses not just the rise of Google but the Google Way.  Much like HP was known for the HP Way, Google will become known, or is known, for how they do business.

Google loves free.  They love to give the user stuff for free.  Free applications, free data, free services, lots of stuff for free.  But why?  Google makes money from ads.  The more ads they display the more money they make.   The more services we consume the more ads Google can show us.

This was a good read.  A must read for anyone in publishing.  Use the Google examples presented in the book to change your business.