Google reveals its plans to offer free book downloads, and the world's biggest music group is to make its music free to download.
Given that I spend every working day (and a fair chunk of my free time) online, I'm always on the lookout for freebies and bargains on the Internet. Two interesting announcements caught my eye this week:
1) Search engine Google
(NASDAQ: GOOG)
has revealed that it intends to offer free print-ready downloads of classic books to its users.
Google's book search tool will allow the public to download and print out-of-copyright books, plus modern and ancient classics, as PDF 'ebooks' which can be read with Adobe Acrobat Reader. At present, Google's book service is restricted to on-screen reading only, so being able to print books to read later will be a bonus. A similar service is provided by Project Gutenberg, which is run by volunteers and has a library of 19,000 free ebooks available as text files.
2) Vivendi Universal, the world's biggest music group, is to allow the public to download its music free of charge.
From December, Universal Music will provide free, legal downloads via the SpiralFrog website, giving users access to its back catalogue of over 300,000 songs. All other legal music websites rely on subscription fees for their revenue, or charge between 29p (at Wippit) and 79p (at HMV, iTunes, Napster, Playlouder, Tesco and Virgin) per track.
Now for the bad news: SpiralFrog will make its money through advertising on its site, so you may have to sit though up to 1½ minutes of targeted advertising before collecting your free tunes. Furthermore, these downloads won't work with the massively popular iPod, which uses a format unique to Apple and accounts for seven in ten personal digital music players. Also, SpiralFrog downloads will initially be available in the US and Canada, but it's likely that the service will be extended to Europe if it proves to be a success.
The launch of SpiralFrog may help to stem the tide of illegal downloads, where users share pirate copies of popular music and videos. Despite the huge popularity of sites such as Apple's iTunes, illegal downloads are estimate to outnumber legal downloads by forty to one.
Of course, you don't need to go online to read books for free -- joining your local library will give you access to thousands of free books to borrow for weeks at a time. Indeed, a quick trip to my local library for a couple of good reads meant that I didn't need to buy any books before heading off on my recent holiday, saving me around £20.
What's more, you'll find loads of other freebies online, such as free computer games (my five-year-old son and I like Download and Shockwave) and gratis PC security software. Additionally, you'll find various freebies on The Motley Fool website, including a free thirty-day trial to CreditExpert, which includes a free online credit report.
Finally, don't forget all the free content and sound financial guidance provided by the Fool, which has enable hundreds of thousands of people to take control of their finances.
What a wonderful Webby world we live in -- make the most of it while you can!
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