In this case, Google is a large investor in Anthropic.

I agree that giving away access to expensive models long term is not a good idea on several fronts. Personally, I subscribe to Gemini Advanced and I pay for using the Gemini APIs.

EDIT: a very good deal, at $10/month is https://apps.abacus.ai/chatllm/ that gives you access to almost all commercial models as well as the best open weight models. I have never come close at all to using my monthly credits with them. If you like to experiment with many models the service is a lot of fun.