> It may be that these competing interests can't all be satisfied and an advertising-supported Internet isn't going to make it in the long term, but they are going to try.
Of course they can't all be satisfied. The needs of advertisers are diametrically opposed to the privacy needs of users. There is no way to square this problem so that both groups are happy and Google certainly understands this. They aren't "trying" things out as experiments, they are executing on strategies to ensure their dominance over the business of digital advertising.
There is nothing wrong in being ignorant if the efforts to get rid of that ignorance outweigh the benefits for most users. My mother spends 15 minutes on internet talking to me and watching youtube. She does not care if advertisers know her age and location.
And many of them are equally ignorant as to how much money they have saved due to ad-powered web. What we really need is a transparency on this trade-off, not just bashing the status quo.
There has actually been research on this (in small settings). Even when made aware of the potential consequences, people do not choose to pay significantly more for equivalent products with better privacy protection.
"Everybody is just ignorant" is not a good way of evaluating markets.
Have you considered the possibility that the future behavior of consumers and lawmakers is not that easy to predict and people have different opinions about it? We can't reliably predict which products will be popular, the next election, or what laws will pass.
Past results are that the advertising-supported Internet is enormously lucrative. Things are changing though. We will find out what happens when it happens.
Although Google is a powerful position, this is fundamentally not how markets work. Google is not a dictator directly controlling users, advertisers, or websites. They are other people who make their own decisions based on their perceived interests.
Of course they can't all be satisfied. The needs of advertisers are diametrically opposed to the privacy needs of users. There is no way to square this problem so that both groups are happy and Google certainly understands this. They aren't "trying" things out as experiments, they are executing on strategies to ensure their dominance over the business of digital advertising.