If every company stopped advertising then google and facebook and twitter will disappear. Are all these companies pure waste? How do you fund a replacement for them? Should these services be provided by governments?
I do not have the sources by hand, but I think google and co make only about some $ per user per year.
In other words, most users could easily afford it.
And yes, here is the current problem, the mindset of the people. Not willing to pay for services and rather get it for "free" and accept manipulation and time waste.
On the other hand, where services are adfree avaiable, like netflix, users indeed do pay. So I am positive that it is about to change.
One company that does exactly the same things? No.
Companies that do part of what Google does? Absolutely, duckduckgo for search, countless email services to replace gmail, openstreetmaps to replace gmaps, the list goes on.
It wouldn't be that big a deal. Ad-funded commercial services like Facebook and Twitter would probably just be protocols, if not for all those ad dollars incentivizing moat-creation and jealous user capture. We'd figure something out to replace google—the need's too strong not to. The replacement(s) probably wouldn't make $3,000,000/employee or whatever Google does, though. Which is fine.
In other words, most users could easily afford it.
And yes, here is the current problem, the mindset of the people. Not willing to pay for services and rather get it for "free" and accept manipulation and time waste. On the other hand, where services are adfree avaiable, like netflix, users indeed do pay. So I am positive that it is about to change.