A feature that makes it easier to switch will also make it less risky to sign up in the first place.
Giving away a feature that is a competitor's cash cow could weaken that competitor's stranglehold on customers you want to connect with or drive the competitor out of business.
At a particular point in time, increasing market share could be more important for a company than making a profit.
It could be culturally uncommon to charge for some essential feature (say bank accounts), but without that feature you wouldn't be able to upsell customers on other features (credit cards, mortgages).
Ad funded companies give away features and entire services for free in order to be more attractive for ad customers.
Of course, if a feature is bad for a company in every conceivable direct and indirect way, even in combination with other features, now and in the future, under any and all circumstances, it would not introduce that feature at all.
Introducing a completely broken feature is unlikely to make much sense. Introducing lots of low quality features that make the product feel flaky but "full featured" could make some sense unfortunately.
> A feature that makes it easier to switch will also make it less risky to sign up in the first place.
Yes, if buyers think that far. Consumers do not. SOme businesses may, but its not a major consideration because the people making the decision will probably have moved on by the time a swtich is needed.
> Ad funded companies give away features and entire services for free in order to be more attractive for ad customers.
Yes, but that means those services do make a profit.
The same applies to the banking example but they can make money off free accounts as well.
> Introducing a completely broken feature is unlikely to make much sense. Introducing lots of low quality features that make the product feel flaky but "full featured" could make some sense unfortunately.
The latter is similar to what I am suggesting here. Being able to export data will probably satisfy most customers who want to do so, even if it does not actually work well for everyone. It will also mollify regulators if it works for most people. If they can say "data export works well for 95%" of our customers regulators are likely to conclude that that is sufficient not to impede competition.
They absolutely do. It's hard not to, because migrating data is the very first thing you have to think about when switching services. It's also a prominent part of FAQs and service documentation.
>Yes, but that means those services do make a profit.
Of course. What I said is that not every single feature can be profitable on its own. Obviously it has to be beneficial in some indirect way.
