I have no love lost for this guy - or his company - but to be fair, why can this not be thought of as a strategy to acquire (a mother lode of) future (paying) users? Kind of bait and switch? I would say the investment of 3 or 4 months of free service is negligible as compared to the long-term revenues that this strategy would bring in.

Any benefit/s derived via possible deep data mining would only be the icing on the cake.