pushing adds is a service that means it is a 'product' that advertisers are buying. Of course google is also buying our data: its the price for using free products such as search, android and gmail; google is then reselling this data; this takes place either by reselling it directly or by using it as part of their service .

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.

Should we really be grateful?

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.

If they let you eat there for free, I suspect you'd find that significant chunk of the population would consider it to be an acceptable trade.

Terms of service should not imply consent to a transaction: that is inherently a dishonest and exploitative method of running a business.

Also, the idea of paying to use a free service is an oxymoron. Google is not and has never been free, it is ad supported, and it has ruined the internet by normalizing this behavior.

well the whole 'product' is a net loss for humanity in long term and made the whole internet worse for everybody probably forever, so no tears shed for this a-hole