Isn't free enough? Not when someone is offering something freer
January 4 2010, 10:37 AM
In a competitive environment, offering something free isn't enough. Yahoo Mail used to offer up to 10 MB of free disk space for their email. Google saw this as a competitive weakness and offered gmail with much much more free disk space for Gmail. Result: lots of people switched over to gmail. Likewise, in Toronto today, I stopped in a Second Cup cafe to have a coffee and use the free wifi while I waited for the TTC delay on the subway to clear. I thought: great! An alternative to Starbucks and their great coffee/wifi. Alas, while Starbucks offers 120 minutes of free wifi a day, Second Cup offers only 15. While this is not bad, Starbucks is so much better that I can't see using the Second Cup unless I have to. I like the coffee at both places, but Second Cup is going to have to offer a better deal if they hope to compete with the web surfing coffee crowd. At least 60 minutes. I am hopeful they will soon. It's good for the consumer to have choices.