Quoting Jason White (jason@jasonjgw.net):
It should also be obvious, given that they don't charge their users directly for services, that there isn't much they could sell other than access to and information about said users for advertising purposes.
There's a well known quote to the effect that, if you aren't paying for the product, then you are the product.
I paraphrase it frequently. It continues to amaze me how many people just cannot seem to figure that out. I even try to help them: 'Your so-called free webmail account costs the firm that operates it (along with the many thousands of other such accounts) a great deal of money. They're a for-profit business. _Where_ do you figure the webmail product is making them money? And, given that the party underwriting the costs is logically the customer, who is logically the customer in this case?' I keep being amazed at people professing to not be able to figure that out, as it's pretty simple. -- Cheers, Being die-hard loyal to a company is like being in an intimate rela- Rick Moen tionship with a brick. The brick cares nothing for you. The brick rick@linux will only cause you pain when it forgets about you. The brick serves mafia.com only its interests, and nothing else is of consequence. --Mackieman