Freemium economy

The Most Important Things In Life are Free

Chris Anderson "the long tail" guy asserts that with more and more industry leaders turning their traditional markets on their heads by giving away their core product (from semiconductor manufacturers giving away GPS chips, to 1-800-GOOG-411, yahoo infinite email) in the hope of creating new "user generated markets", Chris points to a path that is now well trodden and being followed - whether it is the only successful path is less important. Here's his Wired article as well.