Why is Microsoft Office online for free?

I did a Google search on the word "free" and got 7,500,000,000. That isabout two frees for every man, woman and child on the planet. Somenotable free products on the Internet are Adobe Reader, OpenOffice.org,Google Earth, RootsMagicEssentials, (you might not realize it, but Google Search learns fromyour previous searches and produces results consistent with thoseprevious searches), QuickTime 7 Player, and on and on and on. So whywould a company that makes zillions of dollars selling complicatedsoftware programs suddenly decide to give away their products for free?

The answer is extremely complex. One of the concepts I have beenthinking about recently is ownership. My past posts have talked abouttopics from who owns the genealogy companies to who owns genealogy ingeneral. I think the first question that should be asked is whether ornot anything is actually free? The Web has 15 different definitions ofthe English word "free." (see image above) In the sense used here, thebest definition is "complimentary: costing nothing; "complimentarytickets"; "free admission."" I would submit that nothing on theInternet is free. Think about it. Do you spend any money to obtainInternet access? What about the cost of the computer? What about theconnection fee? What about the cost of the electricity to run yourcomputer/monitor/network connection? What about the time you spend atthe computer?

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