I am vary of BigCorpGoogleApple as much as the next HNer, but this seems fair to me.
Or perhaps my expectations were so low anticipating another product shut down ;)
"30% of our special ointment just for you!"
https://old.reddit.com/r/ABoringDystopia/comments/7k6v05/son...
I'm not sure how you could sensibly guard against this behavior but it seems anticompetitive.
It was clear that Meet for individuals' limits were waived due to COVID-19. They have done an announcement about lifting the limits and even stated that it was originally slated to end at September 30 last year. I was a bit surprised they extended it though.
see FTC: https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/anticompetitive-practices
If Google wasn't dumping prices this way there would already be great alternative services that provide this, but it's hard for someone else to have a selling point when there's a huge conglomerate basically providing this service for free.
I would say generally I am happy where this is going. The more Google makes decisions like these the more opportunities there are for customers to learn what they are actually "paying" for and they would be more willing to give away money for a better service.
Microsoft even offers options through Skype (although it's limited to 100 people and the calls are limited to 4 hours), and Teams Personal accounts also allow free calls with similar limits.
Since these various services seem to be doing fine, it's hard to say there's a problem with competition in this space right now.
You actually have to sign out first. THEN you are given the option to exit the app. Before I discovered this, it was enough for me to uninstall the app. I have no idea why you'd make it this hard to just exit an app.
(My son uses it to talk to his friends across the world, and for him it works great; that's why I opened with "it's all good and fun".)