That's insane considering how many accounts etrade has at under 5 million and Ameritrade has at just above 10 million and these 2 online brokers have been around for decades and decades. Now just imagine if these 2 old behemoths offered free online trading say back 10 years ago, if they had, Robinhood wouldn't have ever existed and second they would have probably captured all the millennials by offering a simple app like Robinhood did. It amazes me how some of the old school giants never want to experiment outside their comfort zone. Only if they had tried. That's why every online broker now offers free trading, only because of Robinhood.
True, but one could also argue that during last 10 years the large brokers made so much money that now they can swallow some losses. That's like opioid manufacturers and distributors were making a killing on opioids during last 10 years, while knowing they may get sued at some point (now) and give some of those profits back. Even if the company goes bankrupt, the owners already stashed their profits offshore. Drugs may not be the best comparison here, but similar stuff happens in business all the time. It's just a choice between living good life now vs having longer lifetime.
If I owned a brokerage. I feel like having 10million accounts with a couple hundred bucks sounds like a pain. Just imagine the amount support needed. Not sure what their average account size is now but remember when they started out it was well under 1K.