Google has ways to monetize your data. If I were them, I would be attaching a price tag to cloud storage simply to not seem suspicious :)

Most of our costs come from keeping 3 replicas of your data: https://ente.io/reliability

We could perhaps reduce the replicas from 3 (2 hot, 1 cold) to 2 (1 hot, 1 cold), and lower our costs, but it's not something we've actively thought about.

Also, our prices are designed such that the business can run sustainably, and we believe that's the best way to build Ente, where the expectation is for the company to outlive its customers.

You mean where part is paid for with your data? ;) (sorry low hanging fruit)