It’s the economic reality that underlines why you as a user of Google email will quickly find that there is no support available, whilst in contrast, if you are an Adwords user, Google all-but falls over itself to speak to you and encourage you to get more from their system (i.e. spend more money).
And I’m not knocking it. As a model it works well: people who were never going to pay for an email service get one, and in return they surrender the rights to their personal details so that they can be advertised to. A marriage made in heaven.
However, the concept isn’t limited to application vendors though, and you don’t need to look too far to see that this is a very similar model used elsewhere. For example, as a regular personal banking customer, who keeps your bank within balance and uses a debit card, you make the bank absolutely no profit at all. Which is why the high-street branches have disappeared and the basic level of customer support is tardy.
So where do the banks make their profit from your personal account instead? They make it by selling merchant services to vendors, and taking a percentage from every transaction that you put through their systems. Gosh, I wonder if that’s why there is now a concerted push to ban cash within Europe?
Anyway, whilst you’re not the customer as such in any of these situations, rather amusingly you are still paying for it all (just not transparently, and not at source). For the advertising-driven applications, like Google, the advertisers will obviously be recouping their advertising costs from anything you buy from them. And for the banks, the vendors you visit with your debit card, will obviously be adding the merchant fees to your purchase price as an inevitable cost of business.
Now, this week’s homework assignment is for you to notice anyone else operating the same business model and call them out. Bonne chance! ;)
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