You seem so unsure about your own point that you immediately downplay a users concerns about spending $250 a year by reducing that number to $5. Why the need to fabricate a theoretical number when someone provided you with a specific value?
If I spend $300 dollars on a phone every 2-3 years and $40 for service a month, am I then permitted to raise concerns about spending hundreds of dollars a year for email accounts?
I can just tell you that I've seen difficulty at selling things at the $5/month price point. In particular I've seen people bridle at the costs of running a very small system in the AWS cloud that costs about that much.
Re:Google Is Eating Our Mail
by BenjiWiebe on Friday April 26, 2019 @01:18PM
(#19759747)
Not everyone spends money like that. I personally have a 6yr old phone that cost me $20, and since I'm usually on WiFi i have a $10/mo cell phone plan from an mvno. Most of my friends pay more than I do, but still are far from your example.
This is why Google keeps winning and everyone else is losing, particularly the people who get the "free" services but don't have any say about those services.
The real numbers might be different, but I heard that Google gets about $100/yr in ad revenue per user. That is, they are getting $800 a year for all of those people. Everything you buy is $800 more expensive and there is no way you can say no to that!