[mostly_harmless]

There is no 'true' value of anything. The entire fundamentals of trade depend on the fact that everyone values things differently.

If I'm a rice farmer, maybe I want fish more because I have none, and likewise the fisher would want rice.

In this case, my 'data' has absolutely zero value to me. What am I going to do with it? It's anonymised, so it's not really a security concern. And for the most part it's innocuous stuff like "I like video games". But maybe Google can use it to tweak for better ads, so they see value in it.

On the otherhand, having a robust, availible, free magic box that answers any question I can possibly have (Google Search) has so much value to me.

If you don't agree with the exchange, for the most part there are alternatives like duckduckgo (search) with the trade off of slightly worse results (arguably), or ProtonMail (email) where it will cost $12 per month.

But for me, I consider it a fair trade.