You could indeed make the same argument about those products, it seems to me? We might've had much better alternatives to those products if they hadn't.

German law forbade the "sale" or combined sale of any good at zero cost, even carrier bags until the turn of this century. Coincidentally or not, they have the Mittelstand high technology SME sector and, until the beginning of this century, a high wage low inequality economy.

But also have regulation that identifies businesses which have "arguably" predatory business models. Just because you don't charge money for something, doesn't mean you are offering something for free whilst at the same time operating on a investment type ponzi/pyramid-like scheme that relies on user numbers and ad-eyeballs increasing.

As much as I'm an absolute free-market capitalist advocate, we need to all get it into our heads that it only works in an absolutely free market that isn't propped up in some areas by regulation. As soon as we start fiddling, we have to make sure we fiddle in the right spots, otherwise we're just solidifying and promoting an unhealthy/unfair/predatory market.

Google's a publicly traded company which is profitable in other areas. Search can carry the load financially while they achieve market dominance in other areas.

This model is based on removing public market forces on a company while the company bleeds money in order to achieve dominance.

W/R/T other SaaS companies doing the same, SaaS startups exit strategies include acquisition that D2C business don't really have. Who's going to be big enough or see enough value in buying Uber/WeWork/Doordash to augment their current offerings? Amazon can't buy them all at the peak of their valuation.

Analytics is a special case because the metrics they got from it can be fed into their advertising system to better deliver ads. They may have run it "at a loss" but they did it for data that they certainly made a profit off of.

Predatory pricing is a very real component of monopolization, and can thus result in antitrust inquiries.

Tech companies DO get involved in these lawsuits from time to time.

There is no difference. That should also be stopped. Though good luck with the millions Google spends on lobbyists according to Opensecrets.