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It has been said that companies that build rely too heavily on the public, free API’s of another service are doomed when that service decides to monetize those

It has been said that companies that build rely too heavily on the public, free API’s of another service are doomed when that service decides to monetize those API’s. See, for example, API users of Google Maps. I think we are now at the point where this applies to individuals. If a person or group of people rely too heavily on a single free service then they’re going to feel pain when that service finally decides to monetize. There are no free lunches. All these “free” products out there that seem great have Venture Capital investors waiting until the day that the service reaches a critical mass and they can flip the cash-generating switch.

Normal_gaussian 6y ago
Its worth remembering that whatsapp used to have an annual charge, and it grew successfully with that. The charge was only removed once FB bought them. Personally I don't know anyone that started using whatsapp after the fb purchase, so they were all happy to pay for their use of a messaging app.
- throwaway77_a 6y ago
  Did they have that ever on iOS? I’ve never seen it.
  - roflchoppa3 6y ago
    yes they did
  - Tijdreiziger 6y ago
    On iOS there was a one-time purchase fee. I recall there theoretically also being an annual charge, but IME this was always waived.
    - filmgirlcw 6y ago
      This is what I remember, tho I guess it’s possible they changed the terms for new users. But I bought it in late 2009, IIRC and it was either $0.99 or $2.99.
  - perryizgr8 6y ago
    IIRC they charged for the app download on ios, and on android the initial download was free, but with a promise that they would start charging an annual fee soon. But that never happened. They kept extending the deadline and then got bought out.
  - rpcwork 6y ago
    Been an iPhone prisoner/beaten-wife/lover since 2010. Whatsapp charged $1 per year for update. Happy to pay that in exchange for knowing that my familyand network information and more importantly info about my kids won’t be sold for pieces million times a minute on the digital ad auction markets.
- Macha 6y ago
  I have to say that prior to being free of charge, it wasn't nearly so popular in most markets. Viber was king in my country and individuals still used SMS outside a "messaging of last resort" use case it has become.
- tinyhouse 6y ago
  That's not entirely true. They did charge something tiny to use the app (I think it was ~$2/year) but in many countries (outside the US where they were much more popular) they didn't block users who didn't pay. If you didn't want to see annoying reminders you would just pay and get rid of it. Many people I know never paid.
  - amingilani 6y ago
    I can confirm this. No one in my circles ever paid and the banner never went away.
  - grishka 6y ago
    For me it simply displayed "the next year of service is on us" once a year, every year. Paying for WhatsApp was something of an urban legend.
    - idlecool 6y ago
      i paid for whatsapp back in 2012. it was a paid app on the app store. it wasn't much - $1, and everyone had to pay for it to download. later they made it a free app. i am more than happy to pay for a messaging app for myself and my close family, and i dont like the idea of sharing the data with fb. there needs to be a paid alternative.
      - grishka 6y ago
        I now remember it being a paid download on iOS but free on Android, and all my smartphones since the dawn of the duopoly ran Android, so...
      - tonyztan 6y ago
        > there needs to be a paid alternative. Just use Signal. It's free, open source, and end-to-end encrypted. https://signal.org/ https://signal.org/
        CDSlice 6y ago
xwdv 6y ago
There is a free lunch, it just doesn’t last forever. Use a service until it’s useful, then be prepared to leave when you no longer agree to its terms. The average user will go through many social networks and apps throughout their life.
tobib 6y ago
That's why I'm still sceptical of Signal. It's free as well, paid for by donations but still. At the end of the day I'm not the one paying directly for the service I'm using.
- wheybags 6y ago
  Donate! Then you are.
- InvertedRhodium 6y ago
  If they take donations in order to fund it, doesn't that give you the option of paying for the service directly?
  - tobib 6y ago
    In a way, except that there is no link between my usage and a payment, do you know what I mean? If I paid even $1 a month, I could sleep well knowing they're promising me X in exchange for Y. With a donation it just feels like I'm rewarding them for their high level promises/values. I don't know, maybe I'm overthinking it.
- 7v3x3n3sem9vv 6y ago
  Signal is "owned" by a non-profit. They can't be sold to a for profit, they learned their lessons from WhatsApp. Lastly, Signal doesn't collect/store any of your data on their infrastructure other than a few hashes required for operation. WhatsApp/facebook on the other hand collect, and likely keep, forever, at much metadata about you as possible. The only way to pay for this free storage is to stay more data so they can target you for advertising dollars. This doesn't guarantee that Signal will live forever, but at the very least they've learned from previous mistakes and have taken actions to address them.
  - webmobdev 6y ago
    Where is Signal's owner non-profit located? Different countries have different laws regarding the status of a corporations profit or non-profit label.
vinay_ys 6y ago
This isn't about free of fees vs not. It is about changing privacy policy drastically in an era when people do actually care about privacy.
sombremesa 6y ago
> All these “free” products out there that seem great have Venture Capital investors Not all of them. Some, like unroll.me, blatantly tell you they sell your data - and people still give them access to their entire E-mail inbox.
ptero 6y ago
There are different models claiming free stuff. One is a google-style lock into an ecosystem of free apps that a company can monetize at any time. Stay away if possible: the users will be milked sooner or later. The other is openstreetmap-style set of free data that anyone can download anytime, plus some apps (maybe free, maybe not) using it for some function. I see no problem with it as the lock-in is highly unlikely because the main feature (say, map data) is always available. My 2c.
wolco2 6y ago
Beware building against a paid api as the rates/rules will change under you and you will be more stuck compared to a public api. I wouldn't trust any api you don't control, don't have a solid contract (without the changable terms) or isn't owned by a nonprofit. The free ones will hurt you but you expect it. The paid ones hurt more because you often build a business around an ecosystem that eats you up.
the_arun 6y ago
I agree there is no free lunch. But for that I don't want to sell everything & stand naked. Instead Whatsapp should introduce features on top of their platform - like Payments and make money out of that. Or add a throttle on number of messages people send per day or something. No free lunch is not an excuse for stealing data.
- Zelphyr 6y ago
  I believe you may have misunderstood my post. I’m not excusing Facebook’s actions around their users’ privacy (or any of their crooked actions for that matter) I’m trying to encourage people to remember that this is what these companies do when we use their services for free. They seem to think they are entitled to our private data and they are beginning to respond harshly when we try to keep what is rightly ours to ourselves.
jimkleiber 6y ago
What if we users decided to organize and have more bargaining power over how these apps function?
Nextgrid 6y ago
Profit/monetization doesn't have to be bad. There's nothing wrong with money being exchanged for a service and both sides are satisfied. The problem is when that monetization is based on something else than money (such as personal data) or that the company abuses their monopoly position to force people into an unfair deal. The solution isn't to say "profit = bad", it's to break up monopolies or force interoperability and forbid certain forms of "payment" (such as exploiting and reselling personal data) that are deemed nefarious to society.
hbosch 6y ago
Didn't WhatsApp used to be monetized by default? Something like $1/year?

Normal_gaussian 6y ago

Its worth remembering that whatsapp used to have an annual charge, and it grew successfully with that. The charge was only removed once FB bought them. Personally I don't know anyone that started using whatsapp after the fb purchase, so they were all happy to pay for their use of a messaging app.

throwaway77_a 6y ago
Did they have that ever on iOS? I’ve never seen it.
- roflchoppa3 6y ago
  yes they did
- Tijdreiziger 6y ago
  On iOS there was a one-time purchase fee. I recall there theoretically also being an annual charge, but IME this was always waived.
  - filmgirlcw 6y ago
    This is what I remember, tho I guess it’s possible they changed the terms for new users. But I bought it in late 2009, IIRC and it was either $0.99 or $2.99.
- perryizgr8 6y ago
  IIRC they charged for the app download on ios, and on android the initial download was free, but with a promise that they would start charging an annual fee soon. But that never happened. They kept extending the deadline and then got bought out.
- rpcwork 6y ago
  Been an iPhone prisoner/beaten-wife/lover since 2010. Whatsapp charged $1 per year for update. Happy to pay that in exchange for knowing that my familyand network information and more importantly info about my kids won’t be sold for pieces million times a minute on the digital ad auction markets.
Macha 6y ago
I have to say that prior to being free of charge, it wasn't nearly so popular in most markets. Viber was king in my country and individuals still used SMS outside a "messaging of last resort" use case it has become.
tinyhouse 6y ago
That's not entirely true. They did charge something tiny to use the app (I think it was ~$2/year) but in many countries (outside the US where they were much more popular) they didn't block users who didn't pay. If you didn't want to see annoying reminders you would just pay and get rid of it. Many people I know never paid.
- amingilani 6y ago
  I can confirm this. No one in my circles ever paid and the banner never went away.
- grishka 6y ago
  For me it simply displayed "the next year of service is on us" once a year, every year. Paying for WhatsApp was something of an urban legend.
  - idlecool 6y ago
    i paid for whatsapp back in 2012. it was a paid app on the app store. it wasn't much - $1, and everyone had to pay for it to download. later they made it a free app. i am more than happy to pay for a messaging app for myself and my close family, and i dont like the idea of sharing the data with fb. there needs to be a paid alternative.
    - grishka 6y ago
      I now remember it being a paid download on iOS but free on Android, and all my smartphones since the dawn of the duopoly ran Android, so...
    - tonyztan 6y ago
      > there needs to be a paid alternative. Just use Signal. It's free, open source, and end-to-end encrypted. https://signal.org/ https://signal.org/
      - CDSlice 6y ago

xwdv 6y ago

There is a free lunch, it just doesn’t last forever. Use a service until it’s useful, then be prepared to leave when you no longer agree to its terms. The average user will go through many social networks and apps throughout their life.

tobib 6y ago

That's why I'm still sceptical of Signal. It's free as well, paid for by donations but still. At the end of the day I'm not the one paying directly for the service I'm using.

wheybags 6y ago
Donate! Then you are.
InvertedRhodium 6y ago
If they take donations in order to fund it, doesn't that give you the option of paying for the service directly?
- tobib 6y ago
  In a way, except that there is no link between my usage and a payment, do you know what I mean? If I paid even $1 a month, I could sleep well knowing they're promising me X in exchange for Y. With a donation it just feels like I'm rewarding them for their high level promises/values. I don't know, maybe I'm overthinking it.
7v3x3n3sem9vv 6y ago
Signal is "owned" by a non-profit. They can't be sold to a for profit, they learned their lessons from WhatsApp. Lastly, Signal doesn't collect/store any of your data on their infrastructure other than a few hashes required for operation. WhatsApp/facebook on the other hand collect, and likely keep, forever, at much metadata about you as possible. The only way to pay for this free storage is to stay more data so they can target you for advertising dollars. This doesn't guarantee that Signal will live forever, but at the very least they've learned from previous mistakes and have taken actions to address them.
- webmobdev 6y ago
  Where is Signal's owner non-profit located? Different countries have different laws regarding the status of a corporations profit or non-profit label.

vinay_ys 6y ago

This isn't about free of fees vs not. It is about changing privacy policy drastically in an era when people do actually care about privacy.

sombremesa 6y ago

> All these “free” products out there that seem great have Venture Capital investors Not all of them. Some, like unroll.me, blatantly tell you they sell your data - and people still give them access to their entire E-mail inbox.

ptero 6y ago

There are different models claiming free stuff. One is a google-style lock into an ecosystem of free apps that a company can monetize at any time. Stay away if possible: the users will be milked sooner or later. The other is openstreetmap-style set of free data that anyone can download anytime, plus some apps (maybe free, maybe not) using it for some function. I see no problem with it as the lock-in is highly unlikely because the main feature (say, map data) is always available. My 2c.

wolco2 6y ago

Beware building against a paid api as the rates/rules will change under you and you will be more stuck compared to a public api. I wouldn't trust any api you don't control, don't have a solid contract (without the changable terms) or isn't owned by a nonprofit. The free ones will hurt you but you expect it. The paid ones hurt more because you often build a business around an ecosystem that eats you up.

the_arun 6y ago

I agree there is no free lunch. But for that I don't want to sell everything & stand naked. Instead Whatsapp should introduce features on top of their platform - like Payments and make money out of that. Or add a throttle on number of messages people send per day or something. No free lunch is not an excuse for stealing data.

Zelphyr 6y ago
I believe you may have misunderstood my post. I’m not excusing Facebook’s actions around their users’ privacy (or any of their crooked actions for that matter) I’m trying to encourage people to remember that this is what these companies do when we use their services for free. They seem to think they are entitled to our private data and they are beginning to respond harshly when we try to keep what is rightly ours to ourselves.

jimkleiber 6y ago

What if we users decided to organize and have more bargaining power over how these apps function?

Nextgrid 6y ago

Profit/monetization doesn't have to be bad. There's nothing wrong with money being exchanged for a service and both sides are satisfied. The problem is when that monetization is based on something else than money (such as personal data) or that the company abuses their monopoly position to force people into an unfair deal. The solution isn't to say "profit = bad", it's to break up monopolies or force interoperability and forbid certain forms of "payment" (such as exploiting and reselling personal data) that are deemed nefarious to society.

hbosch 6y ago

Didn't WhatsApp used to be monetized by default? Something like $1/year?