Because an animal spends a lot of time doing energy inefficient things like walking around, keeping itself warm, growing bones and brains and other useless parts. Only the fact that you can focus on the good parts will already give a profit. Btw, this technology is hardly new. I read about it years ago in our university newspaper (I am a student of the Eindhoven University of Technology). And at that time they also promised that there would be sausages in a couple of years. It sounds a bit like nuclear fusion

Yeah, something called "Rain" comes to mind...

Your alcohol is very expensive?

Why doesn't google start with offering localized hosting? A 19" server with a webserver, the apps software and enough disk space for 100 users wouldn't be very difficult or expensive to make. And since it's only function is hosting those apps through a webserver, it probably is quite easy to secure. Add in some API's to backup stuff to a second location, and you have your in house, unaffected by internet failure office suite, usable from a thin client with a browser.

Oxygen sellers are demanding that trees stop providing oxygen for free, as it reduces the demand for their paid services

I once went to "Living Tomorrow", which a house demonstrating possible future technology in the Netherlands. They had a washing machine which could select the washing programming based on the RFID tagged clothes you put in it, and which could warn you if you tried to put incompatible stuff in there.

Other applications would be sending an email to your fridge to ask how much milk you have got left when you are in the supermarket, etc.

RFID has some really cool applications, as well as some really scary ones

The idea is to make multiple versions, so you can sell the cheap version to people who can't or won't afford the normal version, and the normal version to people who can. If they had only the normal version, the "cheap" people would buy nothing. If they make the normal version cheaper, everyone will buy it, including the people who where willing to pay more. This way they can maximize profit. See http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckies.html for a very good explanation of this principle