It seems to be a theme here today... a company can't serve both advertisers and customers. In the end, one of them has to win, and given the monetary flows, it's not even remotely a contest which it will be. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12644507
It's funny how bad of a stigma ads have gotten, but at the core, if you think of it, it's not necessarily a bad thing. Think of a friend recommending you a restaurant, a new game to play, a movie to go watch. In that case you'll be super interested, but now if this AI who probably knows your taste better than your friend suggests you something, you are instantly turned off and annoyed.
I think the root cause of this is that there is so much mediocre ads out there that ruin it for all. Your mind just blindly blocks all ads now.
When you aren't paying anything for something of value, YOU are the product.
No, that would be slavery, which is illegal.
Google is selling advertising space on various channels that you provide in exchange for Google services to advertisers.
> When you aren't paying anything for something of value, YOU are the product.
No, when you aren't paying money for something of value, you are probably paying something else of value for it; often, something that the person with which you are trading is then selling for money, making you a supplier of an input to the good or service they are selling for money.
In your metaphor, you are implicitly paying the secretary, so the secretary is incentivized to maintain your interests.
How much have you paid Google for its free services?
Your metaphor is inapplicable. You don't have a secretary telling you these things; you have a salesman trying to sell you things, and the salesman is getting smarter every day while you aren't. Not the same thing at all.