[bflesch]

That's exactly what I was suggesting: If you are stuck in a low margin business and see that a provider such as google is screwing up your margins, you should really try to work on another idea which has higher margins.

Working on a low margin business is a choice! You can always ditch it and try to find something with higher margins (= higher value created for users).

[Symbiote]

Did you miss where they wrote "a developing country"? There are places where a software developer's good salary is $10,000 a year.

Google doesn't need to provide a service in that country, but it's understandable that a 20× increase is going to hit harder than in a wealthy country.

[bflesch]

No I did not miss it. Also I'm based in a neighboring country to Poland. The salary you mentioned won't get you a software developer anywhere in the EU.

I am only pointing out that entrepreneurs need to rethink their business models if they are hit by this price increase, as this is a very strong indication they are not working on a healthy, high-margin business.

[IkmoIkmo]

A 20-30x increase in costs being a problem for your business isn't indicative of being in an unhealthy low-margin business per se, quite the opposite. If you were operating in a 95% profit margin industry, which is an insanely generous hypothetical, increasing the 5% cost component by 20-30x would destroy you overnight.

This is what happened to OP, and they were able to switch to haf a dozen competitors at a fraction of the price with almost equivalent service offerings for their use-case. The notion they have a fundamentally unworkable business model doesn't apply here.

[MattBlissett]

I very occasionally work with developers from places like Benin and Zimbabwe, so I'm giving the benefit of the doubt here.