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Comment by jyu | Hacker News Reader

If only I could pay Google $30 / year to opt out of their data collection schemes.

Yeah, that's an average though. If you don't hesitate about spending $30, you're probably worth a lot more to advertisers.

If you have disposable income to spend $30 on an internet service, it's likely you also have a mortgage. Mortgage search ads alone are around $10 a click IIRC.

Here. [1] I saved you $30 a year.

[1] "Turn Web & App Activity on or off" https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/54068?co=GENIE.P...

I'm not this does anything for privacy though. In my tin-foil hat mode, I think they take your data and use it how ever they want. If you have this enabled, they do these "local to you" type of things, and if it is disabled then it goes to the main search. However, that does not prevent them from saving that data linked to you in another table/database. It just means you no longer get the "benefit", but you never prevent Googs from benefiting.

Isn't this one of those sneaky "we'll still harvest your data we just won't save it to your account activity viewer" type deals?

What evidence could I or anyone else offer that would convince you?

I'm not trying to be a jerk, I'm genuinely curious what you think could convince you. Perhaps you could get a job at Google and investigate the relevant code?

This came from documents unsealed in Google v. Oracle.

Opting out of that doesn't mean Google stops tracking you. Only some parts of its machinery stop. Even Google's own employees have no idea which parts collect which data.

To all those downvoting, read yourselves https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/08/unredacted-suit-...

I’m fairly sure a lot of folks would sign up at even $30/month, if any product managers are reading this.

Sort of reminds me how I can’t get a digital newspaper without ads, regardless of what I’m willing to pay, or how every cable tv provider in my region has unskippable ads in on demand and (soon) recorded tv programs, regardless of what I pay. The content industries are very much stuck in a “content must be financed through advertising” mindset, and google seems trapped with them. I can easily imagine a paid privacy-first google premium service that strips out google ads across the internet, and I would pay for it, but apparently google’s imagination is more limited. So now I just use ad blockers.

Give me back the advanced search operators and I'm in for 3 figures/month.

This would be an interesting product especially to those who are relatively price insensitive such as companies.

One of the perks of working for us is a google no-ads subscription! could work?

I suspect that what people want with "No data collected" is too nebulous to be actionable, at $30/ month or any price. Youtube Premium is something actionable, "I don't want adverts". OK then, no adverts, done for the price.

If you try to take it literally it blows up immediately. Who aren't we collecting data about? We can't very well have data like login credentials for a user we don't collect data about, so...

I would pay a lot more than 30

With 75% gross margin, it would bring the opt out price to $120/year. Would you still want to opt out at that price?

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