Obviously they didn't make that much on Heroku but they don't report per-division numbers as far as I could find, just top-level.
My point is they have the money to invest in Heroku if they wanted to. To combat fraud/abuse, to breathe some life into it, to respond to security events quicker, to innovate, to be competitive. They've done none of those things and instead are cutting off the last funnel of people who "choose" to use their platform. That tells me they don't care about Heroku as anything more than "Salesforce Cloud" something people almost have to use rather than choose.
> maybe this whole cycle of free tier companies just isn't working?
That feels like a stretch. I can say for myself there are a number of developer services I pay for monthly that I don't think I would have tried if not for the free tier. Once you company starts stagnating (like Heroku) then sure, maybe it's time to kill the free tier since you aren't attracting people (other than scammers) but that's just a sign you are giving up in my eyes.
