Availablity and not price determine the online cost

The pay for or not pay for argument continues over at mashable with a good piece from Stan Schroeder in which he argues that when it comes to free, it’s not the price that’s crucial its the availablity.

According to Sam the logic is thus

after all, if you offer someone a free donut, he/she is going to take it because the price is zero, right? Well, not exactly. In the online world, there’s another equally important currency: availability. It can be defined by the number of steps it takes to do something or download some content. The bigger the number of steps, the bigger the cost of the product/service.

More importantly though he continues to argue that free will not last for ever

because it’s just a transitional phase in the history of the Internet. The current trend, where everything seems to lose value, and the price of all digital content seems to inevitably spiral towards zero, will reverse

Price is just one piece of the puzzle

but there is also ease of use, the quality of the user experience, availability, the time it takes to do something.