A few days ago Eallensmith forwarded an article, which has lots of references to economic scientific sources, by Andrew Odlyzko, AT&T: 'The bumpy road of electronic commerce'. I didn't know that there is a whole theory of why and when and how bundling of products work in commerce (but I should have guessed). Soon after this article, published August 9, arguing why bundling and subscriptions will take the lead over intelligent agent shopping and personalized micro-retrievement on the net, came the following announcement (quoting Edupage) from MS:
Microsoft has struck deals that will allow it to bundle the Wall Street Journal's Interactive Addition and ESPN Sports Zone into its new version 3.0 of Internet Explorer browser software ...
A networked computer with a bundled MS operating sytem, and a browser already pointing to streamlined information. What more do we need? This really fits in with Odluzko's predictions, and there is more to come. According to Odluzko, bundling is not an evil but actually does good for everyone, mostly (as does different prizes for different customers). And most of us seem to prefer flat rates to pay-per-access. He doesn't mention anything about the coming black market (of crypto-anarchistic flavor), but then it isn't the subject of his essay. Asgaard