Over the last month, there have been several notable changes in the delivery of popular software and online services. In the final analysis, this is good news for folks who cannot afford the price of entry into much of the digital world.

First the bad news: If you have a small business, you have been able to rely upon Google to provide free POP and IMAP e-mail hosting services in recent years. What was not to love? Google would provide you with over 10GB of storage space, some of the best spam filtering in the industry, and the familiar Gmail interface at zero cost. That all changed on December 7, 2012, when Google stopped providing this free service to businesses, a change in policy took effect after only 24 hours of advance notice. Ironically, there was an entire chapter (Chapter 8: De-Monetization – Google and the Birth of a Twenty-First-Century Economic Model) in Chris Anderson’s bestselling business book, Free: How Today’s Smartest Businesses Profit by Giving Something for Nothing about how Google could make a fortune by giving away services – including Gmail – for free. I suspect that this chapter will be edited prior to the next printing!

Now for the good news: As somewhat of an early Christmas gift, Microsoft quietly announced on December 22, 2012 that it was was throwing in the towel on its Expression suite, including Microsoft Expression Web 4, immediately taking it off the market and making it a free download (with no technical support). Essentially, Microsoft decided that it would no longer continue trying to compete against Adobe’s more popular Dreamweaver software. The software that you could purchase for $149.95 on December 21st could now be downloaded for free. Finding the download link can be like looking for a needle in a haystack, so here is a direct link:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36179

More good news came today, March 7, 2013, when Adobe announced that they would make the second generation version of their Creative Suite available as a free download. Keep in mind that CS2 is a ten year old version of one of the world’s most popular software suites, currently in version 6, CS6. That said, most people cannot afford to shell out up to $1,899.00 for the current version of the software (or $49.99 per month for the cloud version that Adobe is now promoting). This free download is a nice alternative to people who previously settled for one of the open-source Photoshop alternatives, such as GIMP. As the entire Creative Suite, the package includes the CS2 versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, along with Acrobat Pro 8.0. Here is a direct link to the download page:
http://www.adobe.com/downloads/cs2_downloads/index.html

Whereas Microsoft appears to be essentially admitting defeat in a highly competitive market, Adobe’s strategy is as brilliant as Google’s earlier strategy with e-mail hosting services. By introducing new users to their products, chances are that they will like what they use and decide to upgrade to a newer version. This is the same reason that most software developers have made academic versions available over the years, fully featured versions of software that are deeply discounted and intended to be used by students and teachers. They know that most people tend to agree that the later price of admission is lower than the cost of learning to use an alternative product. At the moment, many consumers are now on the winning side of the equation.