If a fast food chain recorded all customer conversations at its tables and then mined that information for profit, most people would consider that unconscionable - even if the conversations were anonymised.
Similarly most people wouldn't be too happy about a physical newspaper or a TV that tracked their eyeballs as they read/watched it - at least not without an opt-out option.
And yet this is very close to what Google does, albeit hidden behind the distancing effect of a search engine and a web browser.
I don't like Google. Possibly I'd prefer to live in a world without a Google.
That said, your comparison strikes me as rather reductive. Google Search, Maps, Chrome, YouTube, Android, and so on, are all things that have had a measurable impact on my life, and quite a bit of it positive.
I'd like to think these things could've happened without all the bad stuff that funds it, but at the very least I can't just dismiss all of it.
Similarly most people wouldn't be too happy about a physical newspaper or a TV that tracked their eyeballs as they read/watched it - at least not without an opt-out option.
And yet this is very close to what Google does, albeit hidden behind the distancing effect of a search engine and a web browser.
Should we really be grateful?