Google Photos makes yet another case for antimonopoly legislation

Google starts monetizing Photos, as freemium, similar to gcloud, gdocs and gmail.

The problem with this is that they made use of dominant positions in other markets, to enter into a new market (or support creating a new market), which they now monetize from a top position. Kind of like what Microsoft was doing with Internet Explorer, Bing, maps and Media Player, some 15 years ago.

"After years of Google Photos offering unlimited, free storage of “high-quality” compressed images, Google announced its policy is changing. Starting next June, any new photos you upload will count toward the 15 gigabytes of free storage offered to every Google account. After that, you’ll have to pay a subscription fee for Google One, its cloud storage service. 
...totally reasonable policy. Storage isn’t free or unlimited, and 15 gigabytes is still a lot of space." (https://onezero.medium.com/google-photos-just-made-the-case-for-breaking-up-big-tech-420dc6b5d375)

Small companies cannot compete against such practices.

The advantage of these tech giants and such methods is that they do have the investment needed to create new products and new markets. They invest years, and still offer valuable free services, based on future expected benefits. In fact, I didn't really mind that Google drive, mail and docs have been freemium for so long. And yes, they were also created initially as free services. They were and are very valuable, even as paid services. They also helped destroy other similar monopolies, such as the absurdly dominant position of Microsoft Office and Windows of 20 years ago.

Of course, creating new free products and then monetizing them is just how this digital industry works.

The effects on small businesses is nevertheless catastrophic. 

And this is pretty much the reason for which we have antimonopoly legislation.

Announcement here: https://blog.google/products/photos/storage-changes/

See also: https://www.ciodive.com/news/Google-Microsoft-Office-collaboration/571740/

"Microsoft/Apple/Other status quo is preserved, and then from 2008 to 2012 Google grows from 1% to 42% of the market." (https://www.extremetech.com/computing/143277-microsofts-share-of-the-consumer-market-has-dropped-from-95-to-20-in-8-years)

Ranking	Technology	Market Share
1	G Suite	59.45%
2	Office 365	40.42%

(https://www.datanyze.com/market-share/office-suites--370)

Google Monopoly picture from here, but I doubt it is original.