> It is all about Google deciding to maximize their profits at the expense of their users. That's fine, it's what businesses (ultimately) do (even the ones that pretend they put their users first).
Somewhat offtopic, but I always find statements like this rather silly on HN, a site ostensibly focused on and for the startup community. You mention in a comment below that you've worked for several startups. While there, did you only make decisions at the expense of your users to maximize profits?
If not, that's enough evidence to prove your statement wrong.
Most decisions like this are more complicated. While it does make the "I just reserved a domain name and want a google-hosted webmail client for it as soon as possible" case more complicated in the future (and I have one too), in most HN threads on google's poor customer service someone will inevitably bring up the fact that they'd be willing to pay money to get phone support for their Google Apps accounts, even though you've been able to do that for quite some time now. In fact, the whole second paragraph in the article seems to be about businesses that sign up for free, and don't actually understand the limits they accepted in turn.
Eliminating a product for new customers actually can be a net positive in terms of good will of your customers, even if they have to pay more. The post is a little overly cheerful, like they just came up with this brilliant new idea, but your reaction is one better saved for things like finding out a device you own has DRM you didn't know about it, or a company removing something you've paid for with a remote kill switch.
> While there, did you only make decisions at the expense of your users to maximize profits?
I think you read a little more pejorative into that sentence than I intended (I understand why, it's a common phrasing in that sense). I mean it quite literally: they maximize profits by charging their users money (at their user's "expense") - not "for the overall detriment of their users" as you might (quite reasonably) interpret it.
But in this literal sense, yes, in every startup I've been involved in, we made decisions to make money and we planned for our users to pay that money. I'm not blaming Google for this - it's what businesses do (almost by definition!).
It's really see to the "profit is evil" mentality flow from places like reddit into HN, a site that's supposed to be about building companies to make profits.
Somewhat offtopic, but I always find statements like this rather silly on HN, a site ostensibly focused on and for the startup community. You mention in a comment below that you've worked for several startups. While there, did you only make decisions at the expense of your users to maximize profits?
If not, that's enough evidence to prove your statement wrong.
Most decisions like this are more complicated. While it does make the "I just reserved a domain name and want a google-hosted webmail client for it as soon as possible" case more complicated in the future (and I have one too), in most HN threads on google's poor customer service someone will inevitably bring up the fact that they'd be willing to pay money to get phone support for their Google Apps accounts, even though you've been able to do that for quite some time now. In fact, the whole second paragraph in the article seems to be about businesses that sign up for free, and don't actually understand the limits they accepted in turn.
Eliminating a product for new customers actually can be a net positive in terms of good will of your customers, even if they have to pay more. The post is a little overly cheerful, like they just came up with this brilliant new idea, but your reaction is one better saved for things like finding out a device you own has DRM you didn't know about it, or a company removing something you've paid for with a remote kill switch.