From the first UK review I've seen of Chris Anderson's Free. I wonder if it will have the impact of the Long Tail? Anyway, here's a bit of the Observer review from the Deputy Editor of The Economist.
Free observes an interesting phenomenon, but doesn't take the reader far beyond the notion that there's a lot of free stuff about. It pulls together information about current trends and is dotted with abstruse bits of learning - divergent views of competition among 18th-century French mathematicians, for instance - which seem to be there more to lend the book intellectual heft than to strengthen its arguments. But it doesn't have the weight of a fully worked-through idea. It ends not with a discussion of where this trend is leading but with "50 business models built on free", presumably addressed to the businessmen who may be attending Anderson's speeches on the subject.
More once read, of course. Free at Amazon.
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