Sure the data is out there, if you have billions of dollars you can set up your own data center, gather the same data, hire the engineers and pay the networking inference costs and make it free to everyone.

If it had stayed a non profit, would people have donated enough to keep it in business? Enough people aren’t willing to donate to keep a browser maker in business.

It costs $200 dollar because you need probably 50 cents to cover it's costs, and because people are happy to pay 199.50 for the value it provides.

Whether that value is worth the money is a different discussion, that is rarely held with big tech offerings.

> probably 50 cents to cover it's costs

Right now it costs absolutely more than the subscription price