So? It would still be profitable. Not everyone has to use the same thing.

Sure but it will start to erode its market share as other companies offer similar but free products.

And a mobile messaging company relies on the network effect to stay relevant and popular.

One of their free competitors would have grown to 1.5 billion users and whatsapp wouldn't be able to charge money for the same product. They would have had to pivot to something people would pay for or close or sell for a much smaller amount.

They could try charging $1 per year now and see what happens. Probably a flood mainly to Facebook Messenger and in part to other apps.

People are so mindbogglingly stupid that it hurts.

Every user of these so-called free platforms pay way more than $1 yearly for using them, via products they have been pushed and attention they have lost. If you're a potential high-wage earner, you're paying more than that in an hour!

Maybe not all those users but they where growing really fast despite announcing their business model loud and clear, - I'd say even to some degree because they were loud and clear about their business model: selling a great service.

You, could do tiered models as well. At a billion users they were running 11 servers. Free with ads and data sharing, .25 targeted ads no data sharing, .50 geolocated ads only. $1 privacy + the standard. 1.50 premium extra storage or w/e

The jump from free to $0.25 is the biggest hurdle of all. Right now, you basically don't need a payment form connected to your account to use Whatsapp. But you do with $0.25.

The tiers you suggest don't affect any layperson (would your grandmother even know what geolocated ads are? Would she care?). If anything, it sounds alarming to a layperson to even have these options.

IMO your comment is a clear example of why technical people should not always be the product decision makers.

Those tiers wouldn't fly under the GDPR, at least not the free one.