Web Traps

People have long since invented the formula: only the cheese in the mouse trap can be free. Nevertheless, the bait of free something is still one of the most popular advertising trick. Just give people something for free, let them get accustomed to it, and then cut the supply, demanding money for continuation. People will heavily gasp, battle for a while, but soon they will scrape money to pay for what they really need.

This is like drug pushers win over their victims: after a few free dopes, the newly made adicts will do anything to get more.

The Web business is no exclusion to the rule. Companies use free services to attract customers, or test new design, but they will stop doing it for free as soon as they feel that the community has eaten the bait. The users of free Web hosting at Yahoo! Geocities have already experienced a kind of shock, when traffic limitations have been introduced, and mail forwarding has been stopped, and FTP service has been closed for everybody but commercial users... Recently, the users of Webtrends site access statistics have been left with nothing unless they pay 35 dollars per month per site. That all had to be expected, and those who want to use free services on the Web should be prepared to such events.

Of course, the design of the site should be as portable as possible, to move to a new host in the case of disaster. However, not all people are Web experts, to easily move to a new domain, and somehow one wants to preserve an old URL for those who have already bookmarked it. Eventually, the trick will work anyway, and the companies will get the money they want.

Global archives like the Wayback Machine cannot help, since the companied demand to remove the sites that are considered as their property. For instace, no Geocities sites of 90's can be found there.

The only consolation is that commercial sites are no better, and they can die as easily as free sites, if the hosting provider gets swallowed by some other company, or simply terminates its activities. Money tends to expire.