Well, as with many of Google's services, you pay with your data.

Pay-as-you-go with Gemini does not snort your data for their own purposes (allegedly...).

Undoubtedly, but a significant positive aspect is the democratization of this technology that enables access for people who could not afford it, not productively, that is.

The cost to google lying about data privacy far exceeds the profit gained from using it. Alienate your most valuable customers (enterprise) so you can get 10% more training data? And almost certainly end up in a sea of lawsuits from them?

Not happening. Investors would riot.

Indeed, the first stage of the enshittification process requires mollycoddling the customer in a convincing manner.

Looking forward to stage 2 - start serving the advertisers while placating the users, and finally stage 3 - offering it all up to the investors while playing the advertisers off each other and continuing to placate the users.

The first hit is always free

Real.

The investors know it. They're not competing to own this shit like it's gonna stay free.

We’re all paying for this. In this case, the costs are only abstract, rather than the competing subscription options that are indeed quite tangible _and_ abstract.