I referenced "Crest vs. Colgate" to suggest that quite a bit of marketing is a zero-sum game. If people drink more Pepsi, they'll probably drink less Coke. If they eat at McDonalds more, they'll probably eat at Burger King less. How much money do these companies waste shifting consumers between equivalent products?

I'm not against ad-supported businesses, but I'll bet Google would have made plenty of money off plain old search ads, probably enough to make Gmail free for everyone. If not, they could have charged a few bucks a month, or shown untargeted ads. In any case, they wouldn't have had an enormous database of PII, just waiting to be hacked or mined in more malicious ways when the ad bubble pops (e.g. credit reports, insurance).

> There's no "right" thing to work on.

Really[1]? We're paying hucksters 5-10x what we're paying teachers now. If that's what the market demands, then the market is twisted.

[1] http://www.metrolyrics.com/wernher-von-braun-lyrics-tom-lehr...