A TREND BARRELING IN on us like a tsunami, picking up momentum and all the waters in its path is the race to be free. Increasingly more web applications (software run on the Internet) are transitioning to free tools for the average user. Silicon Valley is the hot bed for ambitious technology startups all pumping the mantra “to be free is to get rich off advertisers.” These ambitious visionaries are pouring millions of venture monies into creating feature-rich accessible software to turn around and give away for free. They are reinventing the software industry and advertisers love every second of it.

The drive to be free is motivated by the notion of universally accessible knowledge, an ideal kicked into high gear by Google and its ambitious goal of making all information globally accessible. The race to be free’s momentum comes from grey haired software companies trying to keep pace with the youthful valley startups. They scramble to understand this phenomena and think of any possible alternative to the fearsome free. There is no price slashing when free is in the equation and the stark realization that free is worth a whole lot of cash is beginning to set in with everyone.

The dollars in this business are swiftly changing hands as ad revenue from free software is outmatching that of licensing fees for costly applications. As software developers are opening their products freely to the pubic and subsidizing their revenue from advertising they are realizing that the advertising is not subsidizing their revenue, it is doubling or even tripling it.

For advertisers this is one more avenue, one more cluster of eyes for ads. They are welcoming the need for advertisements from developers and the acceptance of ads from users. As this trend evolves advertisers are being given richer more creative media to place advertisements. Diverse products such as Pandora or Google Docs calls on advertisers to be creative and understand how to successfully place ads in software packages, nothing like any challenge they have faced before.

As this trend continues to move forward we will begin to see advertisements in unsuspecting places, perhaps in a dropdown menu or a toolbar. But as a result users will be given free feature-rich applications, developers will be given mounds of cash from advertisers, and advertisers will be given fresh eyes in a new environment.