> They don't have a monolith: they have a service that has a restricted domain of responsibility matched to the team that runs it.

Except, for lack of a better definition, that is a monolith.

Which there's nothing wrong with one if that's what you need.

> I would hope that my general rule of "only solve exactly the problem you have in front of you"

True. Which was the issue with everyone jumping on the microservice train, most of it was about solving problems nobody had.

When you really need an independent service, go build an independent service. Call them micro if you like (again, no good definition for what microservice or monolith actually mean).