Who said anything about free? OP wanted to pay Google $100.

OP wanted "instant self signup". That doesn't work when malicious actors are trying to register accounts with stolen credentials. The verification flow is required because of the amount of pressure from malicious actors against both free and newly-created accounts.

"Give access now, cancel if validation fails" doesn't work either - so long as attackers can extract more than 0 value in that duration they'll flood you with bad accounts.

	▲	kijin 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Well, then give me self-signup with a clearly outlined verification flow that I can follow from A to Z. If you give me a form where I can upload my passport or enter a random number from a charge on my card, that counts as "instant" enough. On the other hand, if you really need to make me wait several days while you manually review my info, fine, just tell me upfront so I can stop wasting my time. And be consistent in your UI as to whether I'm verified yet. It's all about managing expectations. Besides, Amazon hands out reasonable quotas to newly created accounts without much hassle, and they seem to be doing okay. I won't believe for a second that trillion-dollar companies like Google don't know how to keep abuse at a manageable level without making people run in circles.