Fair point. Maybe I'm too young and have bought into the narrative that Google was the first widely available and free email. Still I think though, the plethora of their other services widely available for free (maps, drive, sites, youtube) were extraordinary for the price, at least for me.

> “their other services widely available for free”

None of their services are free. You just pay for them in other ways, even if you don’t realize it.

I think this is sort of missing the point: I’m happy to trade a bit of attention here and there for services because I’m just going to go without a lot of things if I have to pay real money for them. If we go to a model where every site charges for usage, I will start using fewer services regularly and will use each service for more things which seems a bit counterproductive in terms of monopolies.

That's what you don't get. You aren't just watching ads. You are giving them data about you, a lot of data. That data is used to heavily manipulate you. This isn't like the old days of broadcast TV where ads air and you aren't directly tracked. If you ever find a product that is free, it isn't. You are the product that is being sold.

I do get that, and I’m fine with it.

Trouble is, many of us aren't.

The data is not just used to manipulate you, but everyone like you. Also you are giving away data from everyone that contacts you. You are non consensually making that decision for everyone in your inbox (and, I suspect, many others too).

if you think a bit harder, you shouldn't be. the data on you isn't just used to manipulate your choices on the market, it also ends up being used to manipulate your choices as a citizen -- politically, socially. You might think you're above such psychological tactics (and perhaps you are, but many many people are not, and whether you believe the democrats accusations of electoral fraud in 2016 or the many accusations on both sides since, there is absolutely no doubt that the corporatization of the internet has played a giant part in the most repugnant aspects of american and world politics since 2016)

Democrats didn't say there was election fraud in 2016. It was that the Russian government had workers on social media posing as Americans supporting Trump's campaign, and that they also got access to thousands of DNC emails due to a spearphishing campaign targeting DNC employees.

What they are probably referring to is that the Clinton Campaign in one of the Rust belt states asked for a recount as "claiming election fraud." The votes were close and within the margin for the campaign to ask. They asked, it got recounted and Trump ended up with slightly more votes after the recount. Then that was it. You know, what normally happens. The Clinton Campaign did not send someone to go do a press conference outside of the Four Seasons landscaping to repeat over and over claims that were repeatingly found false in courts.

If you “are going to go without then”, there’s apparently no value in it. So should also not matter if it goes away.

You’re not actually paying with attention—attention isn’t money. Google’s customers are paying for your attention and you are paying for more expensive products. All of the money in Google’s pockets comes from their customers and we all end up eating that cost as participants in the global market sooner or later.

The whole “attention” thing is just a proxy.

This is a reductive view of the economy: one pays for something whenever one trades something of value to one’s counterparty to something that’s of value to oneself. In many cases, in fact, it’s preferable to do this sort of “bartering” to reduce the expenditure of money you might need for other things.

Finally, I have, in fact, benefitted personally from products that were advertised to me on the basis of user tracking data so a bit ambivalent about the anti-tracking argument.

Firefox was also extraordinary for the price. point being that Google has never been the only option, just the most popular because why not your gmail is already plugged in.

Firefox is 90% funded by Google ads.

No, Mozilla is 90% funded by Google ads. Mozilla does a ridiculous number of non-browser things. Konqueror and Navigator existed long before Google ad funding.

So only 10% of Mozilla’s revenue goes toward Firefox

Firefox existed before Mozilla's contracts with Google. Firefox was actually funded by AOL (to the tune of a couple million in sending off money when they shuttered Netscape) and Mitch Kapor (hundreds of thousands because he's a great guy who saw the potential) with some other donations from IBM, Oracle, and a few more big tech players.

And you think that would happen today? A couple of million wouldn’t go far.

firefox does not exist without google paying for it

mapquest was free maps going back to the early days of the internet

dropbox was free synced storage several years before google drive

youtoube was an independent free ad supported video site before google bought it

there are a million and one free website hosting services

I remember hotmail before gmail. Attachments had a 2 MB limit. I couldn't even share HQ photos using hotmail. And the whole inbox had a 25 MB capacity. I do believe there were paid alternatives with more storage.

Gmail came in with 1 GB storage and grouping emails as conversations. To me, both of these aspects were revolutionary, and other email providers shortly followed suit.

* "other email providers shortly followed suit" means that it was never out of their reach to begin with, they just needed more competition to convince them to try: which didn't have to be Google and didn't have to be ad- or surveillance-supported.

* 1GB storage in 2004 to 15GB storage 21 years later suggests that something vital has stalled. Every other storage metric (price of RAM per MB, price of hard drives per MB, price of cloud storage per MB) has improved 100 fold over the same time period[1,2].

1: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/historical-cost-of-comput... 2: https://jcmit.net/memoryprice.htm

It could also mean that you can't invest indefinite amount of storage to ever growing user base, if storage metrics would not improve indefinitely. There is a break down and 15GB cap is nothing comparing with Google Photos cut, which is a strong sign that storage is the problem even for behemoths.

> didn't have to be ad- or surveillance-supported

Which freemail service isn't ad- or surveillance-supported?

> suggests that something vital has stalled

Why does it have to be a technology-driven limit? I dare say Google thinks that anyone with more than 15GB of email is a serious enough user to pay for it.

> 1GB storage in 2004 to 15GB storage 21 years later

The original marketing was the the storage would grow forever, and you could believe it. Google was riding the an incredible high from smashing out what felt like constant Amazing New Things throughout the noughties. In fact, when they originally made the claim, back when Don't Be Evil was still the motto and they hadn't bought DoubleClick, I'm sure they believed it. By the time the final upgrade (or rather joining, of 5GB photos/Drive to 10GB mail) to 15GB came round in 2013, there was definitely a hint of the horns in the hairline.

Yes, and Gmail hasn't improved for decades. Why not? Because Google is a monopoly actor and does not need to compete.

Example: you can't create a new email label in the Android client. You have to log on to email in a browser and do it there. This was true when smartphones were a niche way of connecting to email, and it's still true today.