Corporate & Securities Law

The Economics of Free and the value of privacy: Google offers real time stock quotes at no cost for the user

By Hanno Kaiser

Google just moved to offering NASDAQ and Dow Jones Indices quotes in real time for free, thus effectively ending the subscription model for this category of content. Real time information is, of course, a great way of making a website sticky and thus of aggregating incremental eyeballs on Google Finance, access to which, in turn, can be sold to advertisers via AdWords. As long as the value to advertisers is greater than the cost of subsidizing the user-side of the platform, more and more stuff will be “free.” The gradual move to free on the user’s side may also help solve the mystery of how much users do in fact value privacy. Many websites offer ad free access for a fee, e.g., the DailyKos. Others offer otherwise free services for a fee, e.g., Pobox for email. Given the minimal intrusiveness of text ads and the availability of tools to block ads altogether, customers who (i) have the wherewithal to use ad blocking software and (ii) pay for ad-free sites might be revealing something about the value they place on privacy. For a primer on the economics of the online ad industry, check out David Evans latest article.

Full post as published by Antitrust Review on June 03, 2008 (boomark / email).