"We're not saying you have to pay us $50/month, but what will potential customers think if your business isn't Google Guaranteed while all your competitors are..."
Absolutely! I didn't intend to give the impression they weren't providing a service for that fee, but meant it in relation to skybrian's comment about "what else you need to set up and how much they charge".
The type of service offered by the $50/month GMB fee is designed to engender consumer confidence. As that Google Guaranteed status starts to propagate, companies showing up without it will start to be at a distinct disadvantage from the ones that do show it in their listings.
Scaling up the enhanced/paid GMB profiles at the same time as announcing the open and commission-free product listings is likely not a coincidence. The product listing change will result an accelerating need to adopt that paid GMB service as a baseline requirement in order to remain competitive.
https://searchengineland.com/google-offering-upgraded-gmb-pr...