Technology

That's what people don't understand. Google's actual customers are advertisers, just like with broadcast television. The deal you make with Google is that they'll give you all sorts of "free" services and software, and in return, you'll see ads.

And there's nothing inherently wrong with that model. You get what you want, Google gets what they want, and advertisers pay for it all in the hopes that you'll like whatever they're selling and buy it.

You can always stop using free services and pay for them directly instead, cutting the advertisers out. Or use free services from non-profits and open-source software.

But the problem is that it's also in Google's best interests to make that as difficult as possible. To make avoiding their data-consumption damn near impossible. Collecting, comparing, collating, and indexing data is literally what they're the best in the world at. And they have their methods of getting it everywhere.

A broadcaster can't stop you from turning off the TV or muting it during ads. If they could, they certainly would. (Thanks, laissez-faire capitalism!) But they're not serving the ads AND providing the TV itself.

Google is both the broadcaster and the TV manufacturer in this analogy. They're saying, "Here's a free TV. Isn't it nice? And it'll help us give you extremely targeted and personalized ads. Hope you don't mind that we've made it hard to mute, and the TV never actually turns all the way off. And sure, it's got a camera and microphone, but what did you expect? It's free!"