This is not a recent trend. In fact, it's practically the definition of technological growth that it makes things dramatically cheaper. I don't think this is a trend that will ever be "put to bed."
For the record, I don't agree with him either. Standing around saying "I wish I could do x but I can't because of y" is just another dangerous procrastination tactic, for any value of y.
When GMail launched, it offered artificially large amounts of free storage, in the sense that they couldn't support many users at that size. That's why they had to start with invites. But they knew that disk would keep getting cheaper, so they just gave people a number that would make sense in the future.
I agree that this elimination of competition is bad for the consumers, bad for innovation, and bad for those more capable companies that didn't get the huge funding. It's just making the rich richer.