If you can't properly do the business, you should not be in the business.
Externalizing the costs and internalizing the profits is basically theft from society.
Other examples of externalizing costs and internalizing profits are companies like tobacco companies and drug dealers externalizing the costs of the diseases their products produce (both costs to the direct customers, their families and economy at large form lost productive capacity) while they take the profits of the addictions they produce, and fossil fuel companies externalizing the costs of destroying the climate while internalizing the profits from those dependent on the form of energy they provide.
Just because a business model 'works', for the definition of maintains a profit, does not mean that it should be allowed. For an extreme and easily understood example, if society tolerated murder, then murder-for-hire services could become quite sustainably profitable, and probably scalable (especially by applying technology to the Slaughterbot model) as many people would like to eliminate other inconvenient people. That does not mean we should allow it.
> If you can't properly do the business, you should not be in the business.
Perhaps, but “it scales” and “it ought to be required even though it does not scale” are not merely different arguments, but different classes of argument (the former factual, the latter moral/ethical.)
The question is the constraints that are applied, and they all overlap.
There is no such thing as a "free market". Every market has constraints ranging from what is physically possible (available materials, transit time, storage space, spoilage, etc.++) to market constraints (what people are interested in making or buying), market conditions (buyers' or sellers' market for what goods/services), and either implied or explicit legal and/or moral constraints.
No market is simply free other than the physical constraints. Every market expects certain standards of buyers and sellers, although those can vary wildly, but the extreme of [don't give your buyer the goods, just kill him and take his money] or [don't pay the seller, just kill him and take the goods] is not tolerated.
The question here is what standards should be required.
I also not here that writing about it, while it is not murdering people, Google is certainly taking the position that it is perfectly OK to murder a customer's business for it's own convenience. Just because that process scales does not mean it should be tolerated.
Moreover, considering the scale of Google's valuation and free cash, I have no question that they could scale up a reasonable level of service so that they are not literally in the business of killing their customers.
Externalizing the costs and internalizing the profits is basically theft from society.
Other examples of externalizing costs and internalizing profits are companies like tobacco companies and drug dealers externalizing the costs of the diseases their products produce (both costs to the direct customers, their families and economy at large form lost productive capacity) while they take the profits of the addictions they produce, and fossil fuel companies externalizing the costs of destroying the climate while internalizing the profits from those dependent on the form of energy they provide.
Just because a business model 'works', for the definition of maintains a profit, does not mean that it should be allowed. For an extreme and easily understood example, if society tolerated murder, then murder-for-hire services could become quite sustainably profitable, and probably scalable (especially by applying technology to the Slaughterbot model) as many people would like to eliminate other inconvenient people. That does not mean we should allow it.