Originally Posted by
datlas
Since it’s been free I understand some don’t want to pay.
Suppose Google decided to charge a small monthly fee of $5 for your searches and gmail. I guarantee people would be up in arms. Unhappiness comes from unmet expectations.
They would, but also with reason.
Google drew in a lot of users to gmail with "free". So those users built their workflow around this free service (recognizing what it "costs" you in data, etc.). If they'd known years ago that Google would start charging for gmail they might have made a different choice. But now, because they've got tons of emails archived/organized/given out their gmail address they're locked into gmail and it's hard (though not impossible) to switch to an alternative.
Same thing with Strava - if you've saved all your activities there you're locked into them - it's possible, but not easy, to extract your ride data and move it elsewhere. If you care about keeping those records it's not easy to move to a different service to keep track of all your riding.
So, while on the one hand I understand the need for Strava to make money, there's also a whiff of exploiting locked in users.