[wintermutesGhst]

It is always easiest to blame 'the people' for making bad decisions and enabling systems we disagree with, but you are right that this is a mistake. More important is addressing the predatory nature of the systems that makes them successful.

When there is only one option being sold to you (the 'free' one), what choice do you have? And when you don't really know the cost you are paying (because who knows the true value of any piece of data you provide), then how could you know if you are paying a fair price?

[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.