The Web: Giving Away The E-Store

The Web has become a freebie fest. Can firms make money offering something for nothing?

Yaron Zilberman, 33, and Guy Blachman, 28, have made all the right moves. They have M.B.A.s from top business schools, $8 million in venture capital and a snazzy Trump Place apartment and office suite on Manhattan's West Side. They also have Gooey, an innovative Web application that allows visitors to any website to chat with other Gooey users at the same site. Zilberman and Blachman will tell you it's a killer app, one that will turn the whole Internet into a billion-voice AOL chat room. So how much is Hypernix, their company, charging for this product?

Nothing. Like hundreds of high-tech...

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