You must have forgot all the paid, non-surveillance options that existed in most categories that people ignored for surveillance-driven services. Ecosystem effects also drive it: so many people on Facebook Messenger even though things like Signal are free and better UI like Threema is a buck or two. The users had a lot of choices but kept saying free and spyware until most paid options were bankrupt or acquired.
Even today, there's a lot of firms selling security or privacy on top of a widely-accepted piece of software (esp email or browsers) to maximize uptake. They barely scrape by in revenue vs most firms. Some are small ones selling that stuff at a loss since developers themselves wanted it to exist even if market didn't pay.
So, situation is much bleaker on demand side than you say. If it wasn't, those of us developing secure or private tech would be rolling in more money than ad-driven, free tech in average case. We're not but they're regularly IPOing and gettimg tens of millions during acquisition.
Google the company is horrible.
> Market chose to go to surveillance model.
No, companies offer the surveillance model and leave consumers very little in terms of choice unless those consumers are extremely conscious of what is happening behind the scenes. I highly doubt even 10% of the HN audience (which is more knowledgeable than your average consumer in this respect) could accurately tell you what is going on behind all those walled gardens and corporate faces.
From what I've seen it isn't much good.
And that's before we get into Google by assigning a value to a link and not thinking things through destroyed the value of those links.