Sunday Strategist: Why So Many Things Cost Exactly Zero

Ever wonder why so many things cost precisely zero, where you neither pay nor get paid to use them? Internet searches. Emails. Social media. Broadcast television and radio.

It doesn’t have to be that way, at least on the net. Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google, to name two, could find ways to charge you a few cents per use of their products if they thought it would make them more money. They could also choose to charge a negative price—they could pay you a few cents each time you used their products if that would raise profits (say, by getting more eyeballs so they could charge more for advertising). But they don't do either of those things. Instead, zero—precisely zero—is the cost of a wide range of digital goods.