I did a Google search on the word "free" and got 7,500,000,000. That is about two frees for every man, woman and child on the planet. Some notable free products on the Internet are Adobe Reader, OpenOffice.org, Google Earth, RootsMagic Essentials, (you might not realize it, but Google Search learns from your previous searches and produces results consistent with those previous searches), QuickTime 7 Player, and on and on and on. So why would a company that makes zillions of dollars selling complicated software programs suddenly decide to give away their products for free?

The answer is extremely complex. One of the concepts I have been thinking about recently is ownership. My past posts have talked about topics from who owns the genealogy companies to who owns genealogy in general. I think the first question that should be asked is whether or not anything is actually free? The Web has 15 different definitions of the English word "free." (see image above) In the sense used here, the best definition is "complimentary: costing nothing; "complimentary tickets"; "free admission."" I would submit that nothing on the Internet is free. Think about it. Do you spend any money to obtain Internet access? What about the cost of the computer? What about the connection fee? What about the cost of the electricity to run your computer/monitor/network connection? What about the time you spend at the computer?

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