THEY'RE NOT "FREE" PEOPLE

Every Monday night since the beginning of the year, I have been co-teaching a 3 hour graduate level lecture class at UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. It has been just as big of an education for me as I hope I have been able to provide theses graduate students. One of the more interesting points outside of the entertainment industry was this quote from a graduate student, "How can anyone compete with Google and Facebook when their business proposition is FREE?" (I'm paraphrasing, but you get the point). Kids, Google and Facebook are NOT Free.

Besides the stark differences between an MBA and an MFA program, what's wrong that statement is the illusion that educated consumers have that Google and Facebook are free. They're not free and just because you don't pay for something doesn't make it "free." Google is a public company that provides its users with many key services. Google gives you email, an online calendar, chat, maps, blogs, photos, videos, and on and on and on. While there is no financial transaction that occurs between the consumer and Google, and these services do not physically cost you anything, there is still an implicit contract inherit between the consumer and Google. What it costs you is your privacy. You don't own your email or calendar or photos. Google owns those digital assets, not you. For example, when the federal government was prosecuting Bears Stearns fund managers for lying to investors, of course the government subpoenaed the internal email accounts of the Bear Stearns fund managers. But the government also subpoenaed Google for the "personal" (not private) GMail accounts of the fund managers involved. The sneaky Bear Stearns fund managers had their GMail accounts deleted long before the subpoena, but guess what? Your GMail account is the digital property of Google. Google handed over every single email ever written from those accounts to the federal government: http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/chris-dannen/techwatch/gmail-records-show-bear-stearns-anticipated-blow Your email doesn't belong to you, it is the property of the Google corporation. Notice how in your GMail account if you start typing, "Dear John - Looking forward to seeing you in Vienna..." all of a sudden all the advertisements turn to Flights to Vienna, Hotels to Vienna, etc.

And I don't say this with any malice towards Google. I know exactly what I'm doing when I put any detail of my personal life on Google that is no longer my personal life. It is there for everyone to see or potentially be prosecuted for. I strongly believe in Google's vision of cloud computing as the future of technology, and much of my life (blog, videos, email, calendar) is completely with Google. I operate under a very simple philosophy, if you're not doing anything wrong you don't have anything to worry about. But Google owns every search you do too. And Google retains that information (since it's their property and they are legally liable for it), in perpetuity. Every search you've ever done. For 6 months that search is directly traceable to your IP address, which is you. After 6 months, the data is stripped of your personal information, but Google still keeps every search. I think it's great to catch and be able to prosecute child pornographers via their searches, but your searches are not private. Google CEO Eric Schmidt said it best: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

Facebook is another interesting company. First of all, what Mark Zuckerberg has really built is the most optimized advertising platform ever built in human history. They haven't figured out how to monetize it yet, but when they do, it's an advertising gold mine. As an advertiser, when I have you on Facebook, I know everything about you. I know what you read, what you watch, where you travel to, who your friends are, what your likes and dislikes are, and on and on. You tell Facebook via your wall, status update and photos everything about you. And that Facebook account doesn't belong to you. Even when you leave Facebook, they don't delete your account, they keep it - in perpetuity. You don't own you, Facebook, a PRIVATE company, owns everything about you.

My point is that old saying, "If it's too good to be true, it probably is." Free isn't free in the digital world. Google and Facebook cannot and do not operate on a "free" business model. Realize that nothing in life is free, especially online. While you are receiving a valuable service, what you're paying with your privacy, and that's not a "free" proposition.