Asking for donations for additional, non-critical and unnecessary features is beyond appropriate. The laborer is worth his wages.
I fault Google far more in greed in this case, and sure, I just don't trust or like them, but it's clear what they're about here. Yes, they host plenty of "free" apps as mentioned, but with Google ads and GSM features baked into them. They're not free.
What's more, I use a completely de-googled Android device and have side loaded MySword from their website. It absolutely updates automatically and does so from within it's own app. A brilliant concept.