They literally released this as a commercial service for $2/month. That they removed fees temporarily while it was completely broken does not make my statement of absolute, verifiable, incontestable fact a "strawman".
Fair enough. I don’t disagree they saw it as a way to make some money.
I took your comment to imply that as a result of charging, their goal in fighting Apple was to “get back to charging $2/mo” which is a pretty surface-level statement. Their goal is to get iMessage on Android phones. I honestly doubt they’d care if they were the ones who eventually did it, as the main thing they eventually plan on making money off of is Beeper, not Beeper Mini.
If this was any where near the truth, they would not have started charging at all. It would have been released as a free app to gain traction, and then start charging money for it. They fact that they started charging on such a slippery app shows it was a cash grab
Based on my reading of their post where they announced it was free…
> We’ve made Beeper free to use. Things have been a bit chaotic, and we’re not comfortable subjecting paying users to this. As soon as things stabilize (we hope they will), we’ll look at turning on subscriptions again.
… and based on my reading of their jobs page …
> *How will Beeper make money?*
>
> We charge our users a $10/monthly paid subscription service. Our pricing model allows Beeper to deliver a great product and service, while eliminating any need to profit by monetizing user data.
… and the affirmation of that on their homepage …
> Our business model is simple - we build a great app and earn money from those who find value in it.
… I’m not sure where the narrative that their goal was anything other than to make money is coming from. They’re a business with a potentially useful product and full-time salaried employees.
History isn't rewritten because they lost.