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Fortune

Matt Weinberger

Silicon Valley is ditching freebies for airline-style upcharges and fees

Netflix Reddit Twitter Inc. Silicon Valley Elon Musk Steve Huffman Meta United States

(Credit: Jeff Gritchen—Digital First Media/Orange County Register/Getty Images)

It’s easy to be generous when times are good.

At the beginning of the modern tech era, Google made its name by not only having the best-ever search engine, but by giving its users free email with more storage than any other competitor. Similarly, Dropbox gave out free cloud storage, Amazon offered free shipping for orders over $25, and Uber and Lyft raced to be the cheapest car services around.

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