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I think the hard truth is that offering privacy at a premium will still detract total net revenue. Nobody really cares about a single person's search history. It's the conclusions you can extract from hundreds of millions of peoples' histories that makes data collection so powerful. The more people you allow to opt out from that collection, the less powerful your ad network becomes and the less big money spenders you will catch as a result. One big money spender can easily spend as much as ten thousand individuals with a single campaign. It's just not likely that there will be enough people willing to pay compared to giving them the services for free in exchange for their data.

> For Google users example, free-tier will allow each user account 5 searches per month that will not be tracked and recorded

You can already open an incognito / private browsing window if you want to search without it contributing to your profile. On the other hand, modern search works better because it can build that sort of profile.

(Disclosure: I work for Google, on ads. Commenting only as myself.)

> On the other hand, modern search works better because it can build that sort of profile.

Google has become too incompetent to even take the query (all of it, without ignoring half of it) into account. I don't know what Google search has become better for because it sure isn't finding things.

This seems… very dystopian. Would we be okay with e.g. landlords placing cameras in the bathrooms of apartments for rent unless the tenant paid an extra fee? What if it were framed as a discount and targeted low-income housing?

Why should we allow our privacy to be commoditized, instead of enshrining it as a basic human right?

It's not mandatory. Everything else would still remain the same for free users just like what we already have, this is only for those who prefer not to be included in the data so now they will have the option to pay instead.

Obviously we cannot expect Google to provide their services for free as it's very costly to maintain such global infrastructure and their team of engineers, therefore in turn Google would need user data in order to provide advertising products and generate the required revenue. We must pay for using Google services in one way or another, and right now we are paying it by giving up our personal data.

In the end this will simply serve as another payment option for those who value their privacy more than cash. I suspect the majority of population would still remain at free tier. However with more options available, at least the public will no longer complain about potential privacy issues, and Google can also remove much of the unnecessary heat and focus off their back. There are just so many different ways Google can tweak and optimize these offers to satisfy public demand for privacy.

The current advertising in exchange for privacy model obviously does not work for all consumers so it's time to evolve.

You're presupposing that privacy is a commodity, but I'm suggesting that it should be more sacred than that.

> In the end this will simply serve as another payment option for those who value their privacy more than cash.

The problem with this is it makes privacy a luxury. Should those living paycheck to paycheck have to choose between their privacy and finding things on the Internet?

If privacy is a commodity, then this is fine. But then, so is the status quo: privacy is currency to be exchanged for services, and companies should stretch that currency as far as possible. There is no sound moral argument against what Google/Facebook/etc are doing. The current advertising model may not work for everyone, but who cares? The market has spoken.

If privacy is a human right, then this is obviously insufficient. We can't allow companies to exploit people who can't afford it by making it opt-in; we need to strictly enforce it for everyone.

Privacy is not an extra or a luxury thing, it is a right. If we keep this comoditization process in some years we are going to talk about an antidiscrimination price, or a true information price.

The main reason why not is it is a matter of trust. Just because you are paying is no guarantee that you aren't also the product. Just look at how long cable remained ad free.