You are paying less monthly if you commit to annual pricing, if not, you can still pay monthly pricing which is higher. Commitment means you will likely be a paying customer for a year at the least and hence company gives you a discount. What’s the insidious aspect? The whole thing can be confusing, yes, but it does what it says.
Kind of tangential, I still remember Gmail app created in Java which used to run on my touch Symbian phone in 2009. It was cute as hell and got the work done.