Microsoft has announced that it is to offer a free, ad-supported version of Works. I don’t quite understand the rationale behind this. If the company wants to keep making money from Works, surely charging for it and continuing to market it as a lower-end alternative to Office is the best option? However, if they are aiming to compete with other (ad-free) free offerings, such as Google Docs and OpenOffice, then including ads is going to put people off and surely isn’t going to provide substantial returns anyway? As Buzz Out Loud suggests, they’d be better giving it away ad-free and using it as an upgrade route to their higher-end Office productivity suite.

From CNET News, here. Via the Buzz Out Loud podcast, here.

Posted Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 @ 3:17 am
Filed in business and productivity, science and tech

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