It's also a byproduct of the most successful user acquisition model to be honest.

Getting users is hard, especially on the Internet where your audience is global, and competition is fierce. Word of mouth or user advocacy has always been the best cost-to-value marketing tool.

So starting out by offering things for free or at a loss has been the go-to strategy forever.

But (as we all know) that's not sustainable, so there's pretty much nowhere to go but down, from a value-to-user perspective.