You’re all bitching about something you choose and don’t pay for?

I’ve been trawling the Gmail help forums recently in the vain hope of a sign that Google will not force us all to use “New Look Gmail.”

One poster (38manny) made the the following point in a thread about New Look Gmail:

“Its a good thing they didn’t raise the price. O wait, it FREE. You’re all bitching about something you choose and don’t pay for? “

My response was this:

“Of course the price hasn’t changed! We still pay for it with the personal information that we entrust to Google and share with friends and family using Google products. Gmail, Reader, Google+ etc are the tools that Google use to collect information about us.

This information is used by Google to sell advertising space on Google products to other companies. It is those companies, the ones that advertise on Gmail, that are Google’s customers. We, the Gmail users are the product that Google are selling.

You might as well say that cattle are a bunch of freeloaders because they do not pay for the grass they eat.”

Some people clearly don’t get it. So here it is again, for the hard of thinking.

If you are an average Joe, and you think you are a customer of Google Inc*, you are probably suffering from delusions of grandeur.

*insert name of any company offering ad-supported “free” online services

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