[pennybanks1]

theres a reason companies give you phone, car, card, etc. you give some and gain some its just how it works. its odd very smart people cant really grasp this concept. would the average person rather pay monthly for youtube, maps, office, windows, pay per google search. or would they rather accept some advertising, telemetry etc and not pay or not pay as much

[happypumpkin]

I think if the average person was made aware of the hidden costs in free services, and alternatives to them, that far less people would pick the free services. Imagine browsers were forced to present multiple default search engine options with a list of what data they collect and their price point. It might look something like this:

Google

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Data collected: All of it.

Uses it for: Whatever they want. Advertising, sells to your insurance company, sells to the government, trains AI models.

Price: Free

Kagi

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Data collected: Your signup email

Uses it for: Giving it to the government if legally mandated

Price: $10/mo

I think a large double digit percentage of average people (in countries where $10/mo is cheap at least) would not choose Google. Maybe I'm being too optimistic though.

[rnd0]

kagi? youtube premium?