[paganel]

There's also the very, very big (and very hidden) opportunity cost of always incurring the danger of having your Google account getting nuked by Google itself, with almost no possibility of recourse, for some small payment inconsistency related to any of their products, no matter how big or small.

That's why I personally would never pay Google other than for very basic and needed stuff like GMail, I wouldn't want my email account nuked and my life momentarily turned upside down because of some payment misunderstandings related to their streaming service, let's say.

[acdha]

I think that’s the same problem: once they did the acquisition with DoubleClick, everything solidified into “we don’t have to do customer service, our customers are advertisers” at the same time they were trying to push everyone to turn more substantial parts of their lives than search over to them.