The last numbers I saw (2016-ish) put Advertising at 86% of Google's revenue (Or perhaps Alphabet's revenue? I'll admit that all that stuck in my head was this 86.)

If those numbers are still anywhere near close, Google is an advertising company with some interesting side hustles. Just because Harley Davidson sell t-shirts, doesn't mean you'd describe them as anything other than a motorcycle company.

A hilariously apt comparison - after looking up Harley's breakdown, it looks like merch was ~10.5% of the revenue brought in by motorcycles (not parts/maintenance) in 2015.

Granted, I'm not well-versed in looking at corporate financials, but the basic breakdown shown here [1] isn't terribly complex

[1] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/harley-davidson-rep...

I didn't realise it was actually that much - it's just the only HD product that anyone I personally know has ever bought, which was why it came to mind.

You did inspire me to go look up actual numbers for google though. Looking at FY Q4 - https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/2019Q4_alphabet_earnings...

If I'm reading the first table correctly, the number for "google advertising" is the sum of all the lines above it, so that's the number I'll take. If we compare that against the bottom line, we get 82.3% for Q4, or 83.2% for FY19.

So either it's improving (from the viewpoint of someone with a distaste of the ad industry, at least), or I mis-remembered 2016's 86% - either way I can update or correct my claim.

Lol. You get different support yes, but it’s equally as shitty if not more so.

I’ve been an enterprise customer of Googles services. When you have a problem simply finding the link, to the obscure dashboard login, to post an issue may take hours. I’m not even joking. Like Google is built to prevent you from using it discover useful support pages with contact information. “Account Executives” otherwise known as sales people, provide zero support after the contract is signed and I mean zero.

Once you write in, you wait, and hope. It’s kind of like filing a radar with Apple but a bit shittier because you have still idiotic, naive, hope you’ll get a reply or help.

If you ever do get a reply it’s likely a bot. If you ever have to disagree chances are it won’t be seen or acknowledged. Google is by far the worst service provider on the planet if you ever have an issue.

Developers who publish Chrome Extensions also pay for them. I paid $5 initial fee twice for publishing Kozmos extension. In return, I can't even see a contact information to reach out about a bad review made.

are you suggesting that if you paid, then they would not trade in your data?

I'd go further and suggest that some of those services don't trade in your data even at the free tier.

I guess you might be right. For example, here is a semi-official answer on how Google makes money out of Google Docs:

https://www.quora.com/Does-Google-Docs-and-Drive-generate-an...

It's not unlikely that in this case they use the more traditional business model of having the free tier do the marketing for the premium option.

The point of that statement was not to say that they don't provide those services at all, the point was that providing those services aren't their "thing". There is not a paid tier of any google product that will stop them from spying on you. Any payment you make is just to subsidize their spying so they get your data at little or no cost to themselves. If you are paying for google services you are not only giving them your data, you are paying for the privilege.