Artificial Abundance And Bubble 2.0

Last night I was interviewed by Brian Lehrer on Brian Lehrer Live – a New York cable TV show on CUNY TV – about my controversial piece about “too much free.” In the interview I repeated a statement that I have made recently about my belief that there is too much free in part because there is what I am calling a state of “artificial abundance.”

As background, artificial abundance is the creation of too much free product in a marketplace, where indirect financial support props up the offering. Examples include Google subsidizing money losing free web operations with their very profitable search revenue, and over zealous VCs, funding companies offering free services in categories that seemingly have little hope of generating revenue.

Artificial abundance is significant not because there are too many companies or products, but because of the psychology all of this deceptively free stuff is creating. Consumers are being inappropriately trained to believe that everything can be had for free and nothing should be paid for.

When I mentioned the concept of artificial abundance to Brian, he quickly shot back, “is that just another word for bubble 2.0.”

I was taken aback because I had never thought of that formulation. But boy was he right.

The best reflection of the problem caused by artificial abundance is the fact that there are *very* few profitable exits right now. There are essentially no IPOs, which could be blamed on Sarbanes-Oxley. But there is not that much M&A activity right now either. I presume the reason for this is a perception by acquirers that not enough revenue is being generated. Otherwise why would companies not want to buy other companies if the transaction opportunities are anything close to accretive?

My belief is there are very few such deal opportunities because except in the extraordinary cases, it is hard to make much money off of free. And so I suspect there is shrinking interest in buying money-losing operations in the hope that the acquisition will turn the un-profitable company profitable.

And so I agree with Brian. Artificial abundance is just Bubble 2.0. There are too many Internet businesses offering free products that have no hope of making money. They are going to go away. Am I happy about this? Not in the sense that a lot of entrepreneurs will lose and, of course that sucks. But I do think it is important to reset what the public expects from the Internet. Everything can’t be a free ride because the money has to come from somewhere. And advertising revenue is just not big enough to support all the cool useful things the Internet can bring us.

This article was authored by Hank Williams who is a New York-based entrepreneur who recently launched a new blog: Why Does Everything Suck? exploring the tech marketplace from 10,000 feet.