What benefit do company like Google / Yahoo / Microsoft / amazon get for giving away cloud space for free?



  •  I am surprised at number of people giving away free space to store your documents and photographs. What is the benefit they are getting?

    How are they making profit? Microsoft has $65 billion in sales. 



  • Cloud space is cheap and can help build good will. Plus they can use analysis of what you store to: sell you things better, make you more valuable to their advertisers, encourage you to use other things they do (that make money), and so on. And the goodwill it generates is pretty cheap compared to running ads that say "we're good people".



  • They hope you'll already have your stuff on their service when you reach the point where you need to pay for more space. I think that's pretty much the sum of it.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    They hope you'll already have your stuff on their service when you reach the point where you need to pay for more space. I think that's pretty much the sum of it.

    Exactly; easier to get someone to shell out a monthly fee if they're already dependent on your service.



  •  The Freemium business model seems to work.



  •  YOu probably only get so much space and then you will need more so then they charge you for it.


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