> This sound like a huge waste of money for something that should just be completely on-device or self-hosted I can imagine this argument being made repeatedly

> This sound like a huge waste of money for something that should just be completely on-device or self-hosted I can imagine this argument being made repeatedly over the past several decades whenever anyone makes a decision to use any paid cloud service. There is a value in self-hosting FOSS services and managing it in house and there is a value in letting someone else manage it for you. Ultimately it depends on the business use case and how much effort / risk you are willing to handle.