You already paid for software on an Apple or MS system when you purchased it. So basically it is not free. And everyone wants to make / keep their product attractive, so there will be new functionality.

With Google it’s (mostly) free. So you pay with data. Google’s goal is to extract data to sell targeted ads. This is how they make their billions (just like Meta by the way).

And certainly in this case: we actually have two mobile operating systems, Apple and Google. Apple already has Airdrop. How many users will switch from Apple to Google “because Google now has a close share”?
And using your phone more is only interesting if it leads to more (identifiable) data mining for Google (if nearby sharing doesn’t do it itself). So I’ll be using Google Maps more often now that I have nearby sharing available (perhaps to get close to the person I want to share with)?

It should be clear that I (to put it mildly) do not endorse Google or other big data miners. But everyone should figure it out for themselves.

My initial problem is that it’s called free because you don’t pay directly in euros. But you will pay more in the end because there are now 2 earnings in the chain.

A: Google makes money from serving ads specifically
B: Company earns X (extra) because you buy something based on those ads.

And no, you don’t buy everything you see an ad that goes through, but down the line, Google makes billions, and Company X has more turnover.

So we end up paying double for something ‘free’.