In the dotcom era, the push was to create lots of free services. Once you had enough users, you wanted to see how many would be willing to pay for it. There was a formula that justified getting more investment (it varied by domain). Back then, almost nobody other than Amazon survived the hard shaking of the tree.

We may be coming up to the point where customer acquisition through free service ends. Whatsever is left standing will move to the next round.

Everybody else gets dropped on the floor.