Ah, yes, the marginal cost of production concept. Put simply, to maximize profit, one must produce and sell product up to the moment the last widget produces exactly zero profit.

So, extending that service voluntarily unnecessarily adds some cost, which in theory means some of their widgets produce negative profit. That is unacceptable to the shareholders.

I’m old enough to remember a time before any of this crap existed. Increasingly, I’m just going back to that. When I click a link and it says please log in, I just leave. Fuck 'em. I don’t do bait and switch.