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I'm sorry, I should have used more explicit terms: "free of monetary charge" is what I meant. Nothing can be free in this world. For some people not paying money for something but getting their privacy invaded is an acceptable tradeoff.

Google should allow this free tier where your privacy is invaded and monetized or a paid tier where your privacy is intact but you pay money for that.

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> Nothing can be free in this world.

All the permissively licensed works posted on the Internet, especially those in the public domain, speaks otherwise.

It's up to you to decide whether you want to trade your legal rights to "free of monetary charge" services, but please don't paint all the other "free with no strings attached" things with the same brush.

But the Microsoft's online office also has a free tier, so how do you count that as a win for Google?

Because Google was first. Microsoft online office came a lot later and was crap in the beginning (not sure what is the state of it now).

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