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Back when Steve and I first started in the industry, like so many Webmasters, we relied on free things. We didn't have a lot of money to kick-start our business and what we did have allocated for business use went into content, hosting and equipment.

We used free counters and free software and for some of our mainstream hobby sites we even used free hosting but that was ok, it didn't seem to matter that these items were free because there were no hassles, no problems, everything was fine.

Of course free really wasn't free back then ... and I guess subconsciously we knew that. Free counters were a traffic leak but that was ok ... they didn't really take much. Free mainstream hosting on places like Tripod and Geocities meant that they placed ads on your pages but that was ok too ... these were hobby sites and who ever thought we could have made money from hobby sites?

Then Yahoo bought Tripod and suddenly there were terms of service that said that if you posted an image to your free hosted site you were basically giving Yahoo the right to use those images in any way they saw fit. Suddenly your photos were no long your property and once you put them up on the site you didn't own them any more.

Perhaps that wasn't really the turning point ... perhaps that had come much earlier but we certainly hadn't noticed it and we probably wouldn't have noticed it even when Yahoo did take control except for the fact that, when the terms changed, we had to accept the changes by ticking a box and the changes were highlighted for us so we knew what the changes really were.

That was when Steve and I began to understand that the online world was (and is) no different to the real world. In both worlds there really is nothing that comes for free and everything does have a cost.

But these days there are a lot of people out there who still don't understand that concept and these days there is a heck of a lot more stuff out there that is being offered to Webmasters and touted as being free.

Google has almost become the King of Free for they have bought up quite a few companies that offered great products at a price and now Google is giving those products away for free ... but of course they're not really free at all.

A while back Google bought up a small company called Urchin and now we have Google Analytics given away as a free service to Webmasters. It's an immensely popular analytical program and it seems that every man and his dog are using it these days. It's even been suggested that it's the best Web analytics program around today and some leading SEO/SEM gurus are suggesting that you're crazy if you're not using it.

There is a cost though, and it's one that a few people are beginning to question. The cost of using Google Analytics is that you're giving all your data to Google. It's like throwing your office door open and inviting complete strangers to come in and help themselves to all your business secrets. Is it really worth having a great analytics program if at the same time you're going to give your greatest competitor all your information?

Then there's the little matter of Google's Docs and Spreadsheets application. It's a great service that isn't going to cost you one single cent and that's wonderful when you compare it to the cost of Microsoft's Office suite.

The top of the range package for that useful tool out here in Australia is something in the vicinity of $900 and when you compare that to the cost of what Google offers there hardly seems to be any competition does there?

And there isn't unless you care to read the terms of service. If you do read them you'll come across this clause:

'By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Google services which are intended to be available to the members of the public, you grant Google a worldwide, nonexclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, adapt, modify, publish and distribute such content on Google services for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting Google services.'

Just yesterday a spokesman for Google came out and declared that what you read there is not what the intent of the terms really are and they're not about to share the information they glean from the work you put into Google Docs and Spreadsheets with anyone. But can you really trust Google to abide by that verbal assurance either now or way into the future?

To be fair Google is not the only one that offers freebies that come at a cost. As I said earlier every freebie has a cost and sometimes the cost is worth paying.

I'll admit that I'm a big fan of Google's Gmail and I use a number of other freebies from other companies but before I do I always compare the cost with the benefit. Do you?