alt Hacker News> and certainly aren’t obligated to provide it for free
And I'll stop you here. It's less than obvious that there's no obligation. If you provide a critical service that folks rely on at a price less than your cost, you drive out competition, and it's a critical part of your own business model, dropping the service without warning is IMO on the border of what Google should be allowed to do.
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I should have been more clear that I feel bad for the users.
I don’t have much empathy for Google.
There were plenty of free email services before gmail. Google isn't at fault here because they provided a better experience.
I’d say that if Google suddenly stopped providing Gmail for free, destroying the primary means of communication for billions of people, governments would be justified in immediately nationalizing Google with no compensation.
Corporations aren’t magical entities that somehow exist outside of social obligations and can do whatever they want as long as their own terms of service permit it.
I think people have forgotten the various historic monopolies and abuse they've perpetuated just because the new ones do it digitally.
Yeah! I can't believe people know basics about cartels, trusts and dumping.