It's something of a mantra in the web industry: "You can't compete with free". If your product is a paid offering and your competitor's very similar product is offered at no cost, you're going find it very difficult to succeed. It's a story that has been played out in the arenas of multiple online services.
Thus as consumers, we've become used to the web as somewhere we get stuff for nothing. It's worked very well for us too, if I were to take a look at the online services I use and count how much they would cost me to replicate for myself on a server of my own, for example, I would be significantly out of pocket.
Of course, nothing is truly free. The trade-off for the free services we use is that our data is sold on, we are shown adverts, or we are encouraged to trade up to a paid offering. Some providers make this work very well for themselves, others struggle and their products fall by the wayside
Google recently announced the impending closure of their Reader product, a move widely seen as an attempt to drive users to their Google+ social network instead. Never a web superstar, Reader nevertheless gained a dedicated following who have been vociferous in their dismay. Attention has now turned to Google's other products, with speculation rife that Blogger might be next for the axe. It's not an unreasonable worry, as users of Yahoo! 360 and Posterous would be happy to tell you it wouldn't be the first time a free blogging service with a large user base has been closed.
The evidence however does not entirely support an impending Blogger closure. Reader saw a slow decline in Google support in its final years, with features disappearing and no new development. By contrast Blogger has benefited from continuous development, most recently it has received a new template editor for example. It's never possible to entirely second-guess the moves of a company like Google, but Blogger seems better supported than one would expect for a doomed product.
So for myself I won't be moving from Blogger merely because of a rumour. As any blog owner should I keep a fresh export of my blogs on my backup drive so if I had to I could do it, but why jump because of something that hasn't happened?
But what if it did happen? If Blogger, Tumblr, Wordpress or any other free blogging platform closed its doors for good? It's easy enough to move to any of a host of competitors of course, but given the risk inherent to the free business model described above is that not just a move towards yet another inevitable closure?
Perhaps it's time to recognise that free rides do sometimes come to an end, and either accept services with a visible revenue model such as advertising, or simply move to a paid service with your own domain name for portability in the event it closes.
