Here's something I was thinking about: why is the Blogger platform (free blog hosting by Google) free? Certainly, it's not free for Google to host all those webpages.
I wonder if it's just a way to get people to spend more time online. Maybe they're assuming that if you spend more time online, then you will use Google search. And if you use Google search, then you will see the ads and indirectly generate more revenue for the company.
People seem to forget that Google and Facebook are for-profit companies (not that there is anything wrong with that). And generally, they can't make money unless you're online. As such, they may be subsidizing products that get people to spend more time on the internet.
Google does have an incentive to facilitate content creation in order to drive search.
But more fundamentally, I think Google makes Blogger free because of the way they may it easy to integrate into their AdWords/AdSense technology, Google’s primary revenue generator.
When it comes to Google, remember: you are not the customer. You are the product. In this case, a potential (if not actual) space for ad display.
Interesting. I wouldn’t have thought of it that way, but it makes sense.