I am curious how the Droid-life editors expect Google to make money- if not in advertising.

Google makes $10.5 billion a year from advertising. Google has 425 million Gmail customers. If each Gmail customer paid $2 per month, Google would make the same amount of money, without advertising or any of the evil it brings with it.

Would I pay $3,650 a year for all of Google’s services? No, but that’s only because I don’t use all of them. I would happily pay $5 a month for Gmail, contacts, and calendar (which is the same price that Microsoft offers hosted Exchange for). I would also happily pay for services like Maps and Docs, but they don’t offer them as paid services so I use my money elsewhere. If Microsoft and Apple can be wildly successful by selling their products for money, so can Google. I believe Google would make even better products then because they’d have to compete with Microsoft and Apple head to head instead of drawing people in under the “free” label.

And having established that Google makes great services, would you say, instead of them collecting any info from you, opt to pay the market value of it as subscription? Namely say $10 a day for an all inclusive Google services package, so $3,650 a year? If the answer is yes, then request it from google or petition for it. Unless you want Google to both NOT collect any info and NOT pay for their services. But that’d just make you a freeloader, no? Or what’s your idea? Google go and make revenue by selling stuff like car navigation or tv boxes then come back to throw all of their profits to provide you with free services?

Google wants to know absolutely everything about you while other companies don’t. That’s a big difference. Google uses ads in an extremely different way than Microsoft or Apple. Google sells your personal information (
http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/key-terms/#toc-terms-personal-info) to other companies to sell you products. Can you opt-out? Yes, but to totally opt out would mean disabling cookies, which means many services will not work as they should (according to Google). Of course you have the option to use products by other companies, but I’d rather have the option to pay for services with money instead of with information. That may not make sense for services like search, but for other services it would make sense. No one has ever tried to collect as much information as Google is. We need to be careful with that. It’s a huge responsibility. When someone chooses to use all of Google’s services, they’re giving Google a massive amount of information. Microsoft and Apple already have their money, which is why they don’t use advertising nearly as much as Google does. Google needs that information to make better ads so that people will click on them. That demands massive levels of trust and security and lately it hasn’t led to better products. 

If Google’s products were actually better than competitors then you’d have a case to make that their method leads to better products, but I don’t think that’s the case. Google doesn’t push G+ on people because it’s a better product (it’s actually inferior in some ways to Twitter and Facebook) – they push it because it will give them more information to serve ads. Google doesn’t want to get into social networking to make a better social network, they do it to make money by selling our information. That might be a good trade if it led to a better product, but it hasn’t Google Plus still doesn’t have a decent API and it’s nearly impossible to use it with other social networks. The same can be said for Gmail. Gmail is pretty good, but it certainly isn’t the best email solution possible. Android is a mess on tablets. Google TV is laughable. Google isn’t in all of these services to make a better product, they’re in them to gather even more of people’s information so they can show them better ads. If Google can get an inferior product in front of people because the cost is subsidized by ads, they’ll do it. In fact, they’ve done it. At that point, what’s the benefit of selling your information to Google? Maybe you’re not at that point, but some are. And for those of us who are, I think we’d rather give Google our money so that they have much more incentive to make better products. 

Here’s where your argument falls flat:
“Do Apple and Microsoft use ads? Absolutely, but . . . ”

The others do it, too, and you have no beef with them. Bias, whether you realise it or not. If you accuse Google and not the others, you’re inconsistent. It doesn’t matter that the others potentially can make money without ads, they don’t. Bottom line. And you have no issues with them. Inconsistent.

Mozilla isn’t trying to place ads in your email because their email client doesn’t support ads. Do they have bots that crawl Thunderbird for email text? Do they crawl your websites on Firefox? I would assume so. Why wouldn’t they? I’ve always assumed this is the case. I also assume this is what MS does with Live mail, Apple with Mobile.me (or whatever they’re using these days), etc.

“It’s not that I really hate Google; I love Google. I just want people (including myself) to be able to trust them. They want a lot of information, so that requires a lot of trust.”

You can opt out! If you don’t trust Google and you still want to use their services, you can opt out of their data gathering. How’s that for “Don’t Be Evil”? I’d be satisfied with Google saying, “if you don’t want to be tracked by us, don’t use our stuff; this is a two way street.” But they don’t; they allow you to use their services free and they get virtually nothing in return, if you so choose. How is that bad? How does that reflect on them poorly?

Your entire issue with Google (and, rightly, it should be with Mozilla, Opera, Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, Nokia, etc.) is that you don’t know if you can trust them, but then they go and give you an option to not have to trust them but still use their services.

All in all, I think Google is doing the right thing far more than the others. Who else strives to make a superior product but also strives to make it as open and free to the customer as possible? The way I see it, with Google everyone wins. Don’t like it? Don’t use it; or be a douche and just opt out so you can use the service without actually contributing to the service provider (like those slackers that go to B&N to read books but won’t actually buy them, except Google would allow you to take the books home with ads on them in exchange for indexing what you read via an anonymous customer number and thus making your ads in your free book more relevant to you, but you could opt out and just get random ads instead).

Honestly, it sounds like your issue is a bunch of “what if” and “this could be bad” type conjecture. Have any evidence? Proof? Anything to back up your misgivings? If not, why are you all up on Google for having a killer business model that benefits them and their customers at the same time?

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I never said that Google is the bad guy, but they do require more trust from users than Microsoft or Apple. Do Apple and Microsoft use ads? Absolutely, but if they stopped using ads they wouldn’t see any significant drop in their revenues. Apple makes the majority of its money from hardware and Microsoft makes the majority of its money from software. If Google stopped using ads they’d lose 98% of their revenue if it wasn’t immediate substituted with subscriptions or donations or sold products. 

Why is Google’s model different from Mozilla, Opera, Dolphin, etc.? Because Mozilla and co. are not trying to put ads on my email, videos, pictures, TV, movies, documents, social networking, etc.  (although that may change with Mozilla in time… we’ll see). Google is going after more private information than anyone else ever has. Google’s success depends on ads in all of these areas, which means Google needs to get more and more information from people. There’s a danger there. Some may not see the danger there, but I think it’s there. 

It’s not that I really hate Google; I love Google. I just want people (including myself) to be able to trust them. They want a lot of information, so that requires a lot of trust. I also don’t think they have the best products available in every category, so I’m inclined to believe that if I paid for them then I might see better development. 

Hopefully that helps to clarify some of my points… Man, we really need to get a podcast. 

If you have an Android phone with syncing enabled, of course you know Google is collecting this information. If you get a new device, it automatically connects to your wifi for you. Again, this is a feature.

I think you’re just incredibly paranoid. You over-value what your “privacy” is. Wifi SSID is NOT private information; nor are pictures of your house from the street. I could drive down your street and see exactly as much.

If you don’t trust Google, don’t use their services. But don’t make bogus complaints about things you clearly don’t understand.