Personally, I do not care if someone thanks me for using certain product, especially those free of charge. I just think it’s funny to be thanked for using something that doesn’t cost me a dime. Shouldn’t I or in general the user itself thank the provider who’s graceful enough to provide such service for free?

Or are they, in this case online services, really free at all?

Certainly, I do reckon most of online services are not technically free. For a start, users have agreed to (despite whether people actually read entire TOS or not) view ads displayed. That is how most meta services generate revenues from anyway. Ads are exposed to users, and eventually lead to clicks. I don’t have the exact number, but surely online ad market is just so huge though Google is pretty dominant: and Microsoft and Yahoo obviously are not really happy about that, are they?

Then what about those ad-free services?

Yes, what about those ad-free services anyway? Aren’t they nuts to give out fantastic services away just like that without any ads whatsoever? Well to me, nothing really is free. Whatever user produces through the service subscribed to, they are partially owned by the providers as well. Well I should be very careful about the word, “own,” but legally (as TOS suggests most of time) providers have rights or privileges to use the contents users create. Of course this really isn’t anything to worry about if you’re a casual end user; but if you’re rather a person who needs to generate profit from the contents you’ve created, then I assume it’s best to keep them just to yourself.

In a way, providers have every reason to thank users for choosing their services. They, providers, give you the tools and an opportunity to be creative. If you are successful in generating relatively useful contents, they will love you ever more; if you on the other hand cannot meet their standards, then you are on your own about evading troubles you might have provoked. “When good cheer is lacking, our friends will be packing” is pretty much how you are treated.

Well, that still doesn’t mean you shouldn’t appreciate great services you are served with. Although I decided to move on, I appreciated and still appreciate the awesome blogging space Tistory.com provided me. Same goes to WordPress.com. I can see WordPress.com appreciates me for using their services, and I thank them as well. Let’s just hope things won’t go too wild so that they’d have to let me go.

Nowadays, it’s so easy to find “free-of-charge” services, but at the same time it is much harder to find “good” services you’ve once had or dreamed about. I sometimes don’t even know if I should really thank such providers for the services that lack quite too much. Is it I who should set the standard or the industry?