It could be that the years of rapid growth are now behind it, and the company needs to focus on what gives its service such staying power: its original content.
But as the case of revenue-rich but profit-poor Amazon suggests, this can also be a hard slog.Tencent does give its services away: QQ is used by 800m people, and its WeChat social-networking app (which initially resembled America's WhatsApp) has several hundred million users.
Chartboost, which raised $19 million in a round led by Sequoia Capital this year, has grown a network that includes more than 16,000 games by largely giving its services away for free.
What is really going on, though, is Yahoo!'s attempt to give its service the sticking power of a social network.
Perhaps the company is hoping the closer ties with Apple's TV app will give its service more visibility.
Still, ShopRunner smells an opportunity and is currently running a program to give its service for free to Amazon Prime subscribers upset with the price increase.
Lucrative user data is partly why Skype is more than happy to give its service away for free, while competitors, such as Silent Circle, charge users who are willing to pay for end-to-end encrypted communications.
According to the startup's CEO, other than Strava, MapMyFitness is the only platform that offers realtime GPS activity leaderboards, and he thinks that components of the service, like route mapping, the ability to send a route to your phone to route with directions, along with the ability to choose from over 40 sports give its service a leg up on the competition.
In an article on how the military considers which guns to give its service members, the magazine Task and Purpose noted that "current training emphasizes semi-automatic fire in most situations".
Statements from Armenia have been more circumspect, though the country's foreign minister said on Thursday that "it will be possible to achieve the expected progress if Azerbaijan also gives its consent," news services reported.
