If his parents dipped into the funds their grand-parent left to release at his 18th birthday, just to buy him the F150, he sure should be pissed about not getting what he actually wanted.
What Google "gives" isn't popping from nowhere, the billions they use to fund it still came from us, just in indirect ways.
Google services are not a gift. They are not actually free. Google is not a charity nor is it a non-profit. I want people in this discussion to stop arguing as if Google isn't making money on all these services.
If the parents were slowly siphoning off enough of the teen's money through a convoluted set of channels such that the teenager indirectly paid for the truck anyway and the parents ended up effectively taking a share of the money, that would be definitely worth hating.
The point is that people are spoiled and still complaining. A replacement for Google is 15 services that are $9.99/mo or ad-supported with zero tolerance for ad blocking.
People are blind to this, they think Google is a charity that got greedy. Meanwhile they haven't let a Google ad through their ad blocker for 15 years.
> A replacement for Google is 15 services that are $9.99/mo or ad-supported with zero tolerance for ad blocking.
Youtube Premium is $13.99/mo or you get ads with also zero tolerance for ad blocking. We've already been there for a while wherever Google is serious about it.
It's not consistent but they do block users [0] when adblock is detected. I wonder how it goes internally and what's the actual reason that stops them for doing it full scale, but I've personally got the block so can confirm it's a real thing, and assume they won't be giving it up (of course workarounds also exist)
> The point is that people are spoiled and still complaining.
No. Google is making money, it is not a charity. More than that, they do everything they can to obfuscate that fact and brainwash us into thinking we just get it for free thanks to their generosity. It is not the case at all. All these services are data funnels for the actual main business of Google, which is to sell ads.
If they make money off our backs, it is not unreasonable to have some expectations.
Which is why the services exists at all, thank god for that. What it is though, is cheaper and better than the alternatives, which is why their products are so overwhelmingly popular.
I disagree with it being cheaper. One of the major costs is that we have an entire ad-driven ecosystem, aggressive attention economy, and the many potential alternatives that could never compete with a gargantuan ad conglomerate that has the leverage in one field to completely make all competition infeasible in others. It looks cheaper to us, but only because the price we have paid is that great things that may have existed never had a chance to.
There are many difficult-to-estimate costs for monopolies, especially ones like this. That does not mean that the costs do not exist. That's the entire point in making people believe that things are "free" or "cheap", you rob them of even the opportunity to even evaluate alternatives to realize how much better it could be. There are very good reasons that these kinds of things should be illegal.
I actually wonder how much people actually like the current web. People bitching about popups and ads is enough of a staple of our culture.