Also sign yourself up for googles database of ‘people who will actually pay money if we annoy them enough’ meaning you’ll be a target demographic for future premium services
- they start using per-person pricing or continually increase the cost now that they know a nag > purchase workflow works
- that they start applying per-person based costs to other searches (just because gmail is free for me, maybe your account has ‘reached a maximum usage’ and now you must pay, or they just drop storage limits of free to 500kb)
- that they plug that data into their analytics platform and sell the information that you personally will purchase services if nagged enough
Should I continue?
To add, I think the biggest difference here is google is actively engineering detection mechanisms for ublock, and then nagging users who use ublock, most of the people who use ublock probably wouldn’t pay for premium. I’d sooner pay for floatplane than do that.
Edit: and all that in conjunction with abusing their browser monopoly control to reduce the effectiveness of ublock and similar plugins.
I get your concerns, but I see it in a different way. I think we are at risk either way.
I think when people are actually vulnerable is when they are using an account-based service, for free. In your example, Gmail. If Google is being a bitch about my Premium service, I will just not pay it, and move on with my life. What does someone do when Google is being a bitch to them with Gmail? Do they change their email at all 100 places they have given their email to, just to resist a small monthly subscription for example, or ads or whatever? So if talking about risk, I'd rather look there.
Wrt ublock, similar deal. They would do that anyways. It's just unimaginable that such a power position as Google's wouldn't get abused.
Bottom line, I don't see how it's a bad thing paying them when they actually offer a paid service. I rather wish that these venture capital magic money free services would go away instead. Services should have a cost, and users should pay those costs as directly as possible. The weird things happen from all the indirections providers employ.
