[bm3719]

There is no free Google product. You pay for all of them with your data, your privacy, and your attention.

Your data is worth far more to them than a $13/month subscription fee. In fact, if you do pay it, the data becomes even more valuable, because you're now guaranteed to always be logged in. You're also likely to use it more to get more "value" out of your purchase, generating even more value (for them). Finally, you've also identified yourself as the kind of person that pays for things that should be actually free.

Worse than all of this, when you use Google (or any of these malware/spyware companies), thanks to network effects, you don't just pay for it with your freedom, you pay for it with some of everyone else's too.

[jagraff]

Setting aside whether the payment with my data is worth it - I don't understand why youtube would be in the category of "things that should be actually free". They have server costs, and employee costs, and they pay out to creators - somebody has to pay those bills.

[qsera]

> There is no free Google product.

You can take great advantage of them if you can resist the "payment".

It is a bit of freeloading. The product exists because there are multitude of humans that cannot help but "pay".