How much did you pay Google? Thanks for lending support to my argument that paying for software is the best way to ensure the user and developer's interests are aligned.

You were specifically contrasting open-source and proprietary (commercial) software.

The Google model dominates the proprietary world presently, and even long-term shrinkwrap / clickwrap vendors such as Microsoft are shifting in whole or part to advertising-supported software.

What I pay for Google software is indirect, but given a roughly $100 billion global spend on online advertising, allocated largely among the world's richest 1 billion people, that amounts to about $100/year for the privilege of tools which frustrate rather than delight me.

As I've described in "The Tyranny of the Minimum Viable User", odds are strong that mass-market software of any stripe, including proprietary whether paid, subscription, or advertising-supported, will fail to address power-user / elite-user interests:

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/69wk8y/the_tyr...

Some people pay for Google apps on a custom domain ($12/month exactly), but I don't expect Google to even answer the phone since that's small change for you.

At a certain scale (much smaller than Google's, probably already at about 100 customers) it's impossible to please _all_ users of your software, so you try to please the majority. And whatever you change, there will always be that 'one guy' whose workflow will break.

Even if you pay annual maintenance fee with 4 or 5 zeros at the end, your bugs are going to be ignored, especially if they are feature requests.

If they are critical bugs, they might or might not be addressed.