IDK about you, but I went from "die-hard Nexus lover/Pixel preorder" to ungoogling everything in my life (including every piece of "family tech support" hardware for which I do tech support and periodic maintenance).
For the uninitiated: The Google Pixel had a factory defect in soldering that made the chip housing the audio codec flat-out fall off. For me, the issue manifested at month 13 into a 12-month warranty, with the symptom that I could receive phone calls or play music, but no audio in/out of any kind was actually reaching the device, no matter whether I used 3rd party peripherals, wired headphones, native speaker, the works.
Google's "solution" for the factory defect --which they acknowledged in a thousand-person google group dedicated to debugging the issue-- was the following inane reasoning: "Well, these are cell phones, which means that we have your cell phone number... so how about we just call you?"
Keep in mind, this required me to keep my SIM parked in a non-functional device for the prospect of receiving a phone call which I would not be able to hear or respond to.
I still remember that bug nearly a decade later and will NEVER use a Google Pixel, Google Fiber subscription, or Waymo vehicle unless I see substantial convincing evidence to suggest that anyone at the company understands that "reliability engineering" includes building a support and repair model for paying customers.
I paid with my attention (and then later I paid __again__ for the incorporated advertising costs when I bought the advertised product). They can't have it both ways.
I believe the point is that advertisements are placed all over in the real world, and they are targeted based on demographics pf the area just as much as Google would be targeting ads at you.
Who handles the support for Outside?
In other words, by implicitly paying with “attention” you agreed to the contract which has no support, you cannot then complain about having no support.
Targeting ads at an aggregate demographic (like you would with a billboard) is not the same as targeting ads at a specific person because they match a desired demographic. It would be more like some guy with a sign recognizing you and running up to you to wave the sign in your face specifically.
Also: I would argue that there is support for "Outside", as you put it. Fire dept/ambulance/police for emergencies, government at various levels for some things, utility companies (e.g. if a water line broke or whatever), etc, etc.
I think you're saying that ① the attention you pay to ads is equivalent to the sums Google typically charges paying customers, ② the help pages Google provides to you aren't equivalent to the support Google provides to paying customers and ③ the difference is unfair. Do I understand you correctly?
That money passes through several transactions. You're a customer of shops that are customers of manufacturers that are customers of Google. We don't generally treat customers of customers of customers as customers, so I'm not surprised that Google doesn't.
I suppose you could argue for some sort of tracking system that would give Google data to prove that you do in fact buy what you buy, so Google would know that you aren't a penniless hermit, customer of noone and source of no money. I can see some disadvantages to such a system though, and I think you can too.
I pay handsomely for support from Google. Still can't get into my main Google account even though I have the username, password, recovery email address.
Sure. But when Google made money off me as a paying customer, the support was good.
I think each of us has to make a choice: Either be a paying customer or accept that you're not a paying customer and aren't going to be treated like one.