[elmuchoprez]

For-pay services have an incentive not to do something with my data that upsets me enough to leave. Let's say an advertising company offers eTrade 50-cents for info on every trade I make. That's free money for eTrade right up until I, as the client, decide that's intrusive and take my business elsewhere. Now eTrade is out my $10/trade, let alone the 50-cents.

But you don't have that leverage with a free service. To them, (in the long run) making some money at the cost of pissing off their customers is better than making no money at all.

[thrill]

Pissing off customers is more of a short-term approach to making money.