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When Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, had an internal memo leaked, it sent all kinds of people, including Wall St analysts scurrying around looking for any financial weaknesses in the brand.

The brand also gained tons of free advice from eager bloggers and journalists only to willing to share; one of the best suggestions came from Randall Stross, Professor of Business at San Jose State who wrote in the NYT that the company should offer free Wi-Fi access.

For a number of years, the Seattle based mega-corp has provided paid for Wi-Fi services in its cafes courtesy of Deutsche Telecom's T-Mobile. Free Wi-Fi has been the calling card of many of Starbucks's mom and pop competitors; it's obviously a competitive advantage, but it's also symbolic of a different type of attitude that these smaller stores want to convey; one of caring attentive service that they know can't quite be matched by Starbucks.

By switching to free Wi-Fi, Starbucks could instantly change how people feel about the brand and undermine their smaller competitors.

The debate over service or profit is everywhere. One interesting development spotted by is the recent desire by some airports to charge for power usage. With the dozens of electronic devices that most frequent flyers carry with them, there's a big demand for power and obviously a financial opportunity.

The question is when does this stop?

If you follower of pure market-driven capitalism and motivated solely by profit, why wouldn't you charge for everything? Shouldn't airports charge passengers to take the train from terminal to terminal or for riding the electronic walkways? Perhaps they could even use global warming and the need for energy conservation as justification for these charges.

Starbucks clearly has a unique power branding advantage over its competition that allows it to charge for Wi-Fi and still attract millions of customers per week, but for the long-term health of the brand, it might be smart to make this service free.

For other brands out there in the service business there's a lesson. While your capitalistic and short-term profit motivation suggests you should charge for everything, giving services away might benefit the long-term financial health of your brand.

However, given that airports are ostensibly monopolies with captive audiences, expect to have to pay for your power the next time you want to plug in your laptop at the gate.