Is it? Premium domain names have genuine scarcity and $850 is nothing to a company making productive use of it. Better than having them all squatted and resold for tens of thousands.
Premium domains are just domains which contain a common single word. Basically just the ones likely to be squat. You were never going to get tech.dev for $12 anyway. Would you rather pay a squatter $20,000 for it or have it sit unsold until someone actually wants to use it and then it costs ~$800.
Premium domains save real users money and make squatting unviable.
On other popular registries it would cost you thousands of dollars, or for .com tens of thousands of dollars, as a squatter would have picked it up instantly. By charging a high price for rental, Google ensures that it's unprofitable to squat on it, and legitimate owners get it for much less.
