>Since gathering / ad-selling services are so lucrative, they essentially subsidize the development of the highest-quality products in the market. The best engineers work for these companies. They have massive teams of people refining their products. And, these companies use IP laws to prevent clones. Essentially, they lock out for-fee competitors.
> You get those free, truly amazing services for nothing because the companies found ways to generate value from the data being gathered. The cost to maintain that infrastructure and provide those great services is pretty high and has taken some brilliant engineers years of sweat.
The only real difference is your use of the phrase "lock-out", but I don't think that's a reasonable way to look at it. If enough people really want to be part of a fee-based ecosystem, no one is stopping a company from engaging those people. You bring up IP laws, but that's really an independent issue, since fee-based and ad-based businesses can both use IP laws in the same way.