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1) They may give you feedback 2) You can track + analyze their usage 3) They may refer peers 4) They may become 'paid customers'
In a vacuum, non-paying customers may not be super-valuable. However, if these non-paying users have good experiences with your product/service, it is possible they are adding more value to than they cost.
Remember, the marginal cost (per user) for many web apps is minimal.
W3Counter barely gets by as a freemium service. The paying users cover the servers it takes to run the site, but not enough more to pay even a single person's salary. I'm always waiting until service degrades to the point someone starts complaining before I add more hardware, otherwise enough new users wouldn't have started subscriptions to pay for the expansion.
The next service I built, W3ROI, does not offer a free plan. It's harder to build traffic to the site, and there are less people talking about it on blogs and social networks, but each new user it adds pays for themselves. There is never a risk of not being able to afford the hardware to provide a good quality of service.
Proving your market - Attracting and registering large numbers of people prove it's something people want. If you can't give it away for free, there's a problem. (Good for funding)
User feedback and "The up sell" - With the right features that non-paying customer may be a paying customer waiting to happen. You'll also have collection of emails of people interested enough to try your product, where you can up sell them to paid later. (Good for your product)
Scalability - Testing your product in the real world with real traffic patterns, live servers, and people depending on your service is very valuable. (Good for funding AND your product)
I'm a huge believer in the freemium model. Just don't give the cow away and try to position your premium product where users feel like they are getting real value when they have to take out their wallets.
It depends on the product. In some products, there may be "network effects" where each user benefits by the number of other users in the system-- for example, if Facebook were to adopt a Freemium model, the paying customers would benefit from having the free users in the system. This, of course, is not the case for most apps-- like Dropbox, in the example you chose. For Dropbox, the free customers have costs associat…