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.
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?
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.
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.
