Link: https://proton.me/blog/what-is-your-data-worth-to-google

An interesting deep-dive into how Google profiles and values different users.

It highlights that even though the service is "free", the sheer value each user holds to Google from their data and ad-revenue. And with that, the impact you can have by leaving them.

If you haven't already switched, you can check out the guide below to get started:

https://purchasewithpurpose.io/

How? Where is that money coming from.

Your personal data and your attention (advertisements). Those two things are the cornerstone of how big tech makes their money

the sheer value each user holds to Google from their data and ad-revenue

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ad-revenue-earnings-41246.html

Companies pay for ad space but also access to your customer profile data for like market research.

I have spent zero dollars on things that were advertised to me.

Google doesn't care if you spend money on what is advertised to you. They get paid just for showing you the advert.

That doesn’t matter. It costs money for companies to place adds with Google. That money goes directly to them regardless of whether or not you make a purchase. They then make use of their vast data resources to target people with said ads, which may not affect you, but definitely pushes products (some business people have described a 3x on investment with Google and Facebook ads).

Because Google ads are on nearly every website, and because Google owns such a large bevy of services including search, YouTube, Gmail, and maps, they can collect all of this data into a scarily accurate profile of your behavior, interests, and beliefs. Data that is shared with their partners and ends up all over the internet.

What is the color code on that page supposed to convey?

I just clicked on "browsers" and found no explanation nor pattern on the color code.

And no: I won't search for it, this is critique with a question mark not genuine need for answer.

I could use that money back

So here's the deal: you pay me out and in return you'll stop tracking me.

Exactly, and even if you bought a few, who the fuck is spending even close to that much a year. Advertisers would also have costs to the products they sell beyond just the marketing budget.

They'll su they won't track you. But offer you the entire suite, almost as if they want you in their ecosystem, while also lying about being non profit

My point: dig deeper

I don't even have that amount of money to spend, you can argue if it's truly zero or not but I don't remember buying anything on an advert so far. Sometimes seen adverts for things I already bought and have no intention to buy again as I already have it.

That's bull.

It's an average. Some people are going to bring it down, some people bring it up. I take a certain pride in doing my best to bring it down, but at the end of the day living in a capitalist hellscape, you have to concede it's going to get you at least a little.

Because it's not just clicking on sponsored Google links. You may never directly buy something sponsored, but by giving them your data, you give them demographic information to find people like you that might be more prone to clicking links, and that helps.

thats more money than I made last year so...

You don't have to buy directly from the advert for it to be beneficial to the advertiser.

The "warning red" is supposed to mirror the brand color?

Because then it would need to be the same color ass the icons. This way it looks like a signal color on top.

I e. This one, informiak mail is something I clearly should not touch, without ever having heard of them.

Oh, I'm worth a hell of a lot more than that to them

But I don't even buy their products at all

I think @Balex@lemmy.world means that all Google cares about is the ads getting served to you.

Great website, thanks; I've never seen such a thorough email page before.

The money to pay for that must come from somewhere though. There is no way at all that anyone could be getting even remotely close to that value out of me.

For me: paragraph shapes and colors convey meaning. It's as if someone chose to have a red exclamation mark ‼️ as their logo and uses it inline.

Without knowing what it is it looks like a call to action.

Many of these comparison images and pages use color coding to quickly convey information. So I searched for meaning that wasn't there .. .

In short l: my brain sees "red" and searched what I was warned against.

Yeah, it's the giant advertisers paying Google to show their ads in front of you, whether you actually buy anything from them or not. Hundreds of companies chip in and Google sums that total.

"Proton analyzed 54,000 profiles..."

"...We cannot scan emails, build a profile, or sell access to your attention."

How did they get the 54,000 profiles?

You seem to be misunderstanding the entire premise, I just can't tell if you're doing it on purpose or not. They don't make money from your purchases. To oversimplify everything, they make money when a company pays them to show you an ad. They also make money by watching everything you do and building a profile about you that they then sell to the companies so they can pay Google to show you ads that they think might tempt you the most. There are very complicated metrics running behind the screen that determines how likely the purchases you have made were affected by ads shown to you, whether you clicked on the ads or not. You might think you haven't been affected by ads or made Google $16,000 because you didn't spend $16,000, but that's not how they make money from you.

That's why Pichai tries to kill off anything that threatens its bottom line, such as ending Manifest V2 support for Chrome addons like uBlock Origin.

ye, but how much money did you make in labor surplus value ?

no idea.

If they want to pay me half I'll turn ads back on.

I know, but if that much money has been spent it is at a huge loss to who ever is spending it

'Proton analyzed over 54,000 demographic profiles using 2025 ad auction data to estimate what advertisers pay to reach different types of Americans. The range is much wider than you might expect."
At least read the first Paragraph before asking.

I read the whole article but it doesn't explain what "ad auction data" means.

I thought most ads are pay per click. We have to train people not to click on ads.

We actually learned that when I grew up. Don't click on random stuff the internet shows you. Click on what you are looking for, not what is shown to you, it might be a virus.

There's basically a marketplace where people who want to sell things bid on advertisement locations. So you may say, "I want to spam 10000 people who have school age children", and you have to compete with other businesses who want to spam the same people.

While the details are of course proprietary, presumably some data has to be made available to the companies buying ads. So I guess that is what Proton looked at.