New
#11
I see your point but they must be doing something right to have over $6bn in profit. MS makes the majority of their money from OEM licenses who are rumoured to pay MS $50/license, which will add up very quickly!
Ads, ads and more ads! Ever seen things like this on Facebook:secondly , i want to know where that profit of facebook and others come from .... personally they dont take sth from me .
Companies pay Facebook to display their ads directly to their target market - for example if they were promoting student insurance then they could pay Facebook to display ads to people aged 17-25. Do you see what I mean? There's a few other things:
Facebook tests ‘boost’ and ‘advertise’ buttons instead of ‘promote’
http://mashable.com/2013/02/14/faceb...friends-posts/
I recently bought an iPhone 5 and have spoken to people about it in chat, and I have also used it to connect to Facebook. That's probably why I'm getting an iPhone case ad at the side!
Edit: Looking at the other ads, they're also tailored towards me. I'm a student, I stayed in a Travelodge about 3 weeks ago and I own an iPhone.
How Facebook Sells Your Personal Information : Discovery News
New privacy row as Facebook begins selling access to users to boost ailing profits | Mail Online
Yes, Companies Are Harvesting – and Selling – Your Facebook Profile - ProPublica
And many more!
Last edited by tom982; 23 Apr 2013 at 06:55.
I couldn't suffer through the whole thread, I'm sorry, so just giving my untainted take:
Over the years I have tried a ton of 'freeware'.
The profit model for some freeware is all the PAID to bundle stuff they put in with the install, be it some toolbar or offer of a virus scan, I've seen some with 4+ offers during the install.
Some will have various PAID ads on their homepage that could be anything.
Some freeware surely has some running ads while you use their product or can even just be as simple as something in a splash screen.
They could be using it to get you to try their other PAID products or have an ad somewhere or a timed ad or a later downloaded ad, if you allow their code to get to the internets.
My favorite way is WinPatrol's, great product so I don't mind kicking the 1 man development team some scratch any way, but you pay and you get access to his search database, gotten to, from within WinPatrol and only enabled by his code, and that is the ONLY added feature you get, but a very good one, great program if you don't have it, you probably should.
In WinPatrol's case, he probably has been paid $24.95 somewhere north of 100,000 times, and wouldn't surprise me if it was way over 1 million, do the math!
Donate-ware is a fair model too, just donate if you can afford to and find it useful, just becomes a #'s game, whether that method works and they can stay afloat or not.
Impatient are you? Microsoft Customer support gone wrong
You repeated most of what had been said.