> The thing that annoys me is the standard operating procedure in tech is to offer stuff for free until a bunch of people depend on it and then to start charging as much as you possibly can [...]
Maybe someone more knowledgeable can help me.. but from a laymans point of view, how is this different from the practice of "dumping?" Shouldn't the FTC be more active in protecting markets from this type of strategy?
It’s not anticompetitive to offer a freemium product, unless your market position is so powerful (Microsoft vs Netscape late 1990s) that competitors cannot also afford the same giveaway.
With the consolidation of resources into Big Tech, this is quickly becoming the reality across all domains. I imagine that they will always keep cloud computing costs juuuust low enough to have plausible deniability in a court case, but still.
