Paying Google Music user here. It's not a panacea.

Exactly. If I am paying I am expecting top notch customer service. From what I have read here multiple times it's not Google's strong suit. I expect them to handle my customer service call by actual human rather than a bot if I am paying.

I'm pretty satisfied with they way they handled the transition to YouTube Music, and am glad they're reducing the number of competing services.

This 1000%. I like Google services (Photos, YouTube, Gmail), but the free ones creep me out. The services that aren't spying aggressively on me are clearly just loss-leaders and, given Google's track record, are inevitably doomed for the scrapheap.

Paying Google doesn't mean that the service will survive, or that Google will not harvest your user data. See, e.g., Google Music, Nest, etc.

It just means that you're paying Google for a service you could easily have gotten for free.

Given Google's history of killing products, especially on the consumer side, why would you ever pay Google for a consumer-focused product?

I will pay for it because it's a really good product and I want to have it. I agree that the fee doesn't guarantee Google will always keep the product around, but it certainly seems to signal some investment in Google Photos.

Hoping for a day when I can pay for consumer version on gmail without ads. Already pay for YouTube and extended storage for photos.

How many ads do you see in gmail? I don't remember the last ad I've seen there.

They'll still use it for ads and AI training tho. You're just paying to let them store and use more.

Knowing corporate world... they will just milk both models