To be fair, they are providing several services with it, along with the data hosting. Being verified also means you get boosted in search results, with comes with more downloads. So at least the cost can be somewhat justified. Whether it’s too much is valid for debate.
I was wondering why it was written in C++, but the FAQ already beat me to it.
Glad to see they are open to using safer languages. C/C++ was great for its time, but we really need to move on from them.