Look at all the deprecated Google products. What happens when Gemini-SaaS makes billions from licensing to other companies, and Gemini-Charity-for-the-poors starts losing money?
Sadly, the bigger the $$ in the tech pie, the more we have attracted robber barons, etc.
In aggregate, this is true, but there are many ways to game the system to one's advantage and get a true "free lunch." For example, people watching Youtube with an adblocker and logged out don't provide Google with any income or useful telemetry. Likewise you can get practically unlimited GPT/Claude/etc by using multiple accounts.
TINSTAFL has two main implications. First that nothing is free, someone has to pay for it. Second is that money is not the only thing you pay with; every choice has an opportunity cost. Gaming the system costs someone something.
By selling those services at a cost of “free”, hyperscalers eliminate competition by forcing market entrants to compete against a unit price of 0. They have to have a secondary business to subsidize the losses from servicing the “free” users, which of course is usually targeted advertising to capitalize on the resources paid by users for access. Or simply selling to data brokers.
With the importance of training data and network effects, “free” services even further concentrate market power. Everyone talks about how AI is going to take away jobs, but no one wants to confront how badly the anticompetitive practices in big tech are hurting the economy. Less competition means less opportunity for everyone else, regardless of consumer benefit.
The only way it works if the “free” service for tutoring or healthcare is through government subsidies or an actual non-profit. Otherwise it’s just going to concentrate market power with the megacorps.