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It did do, but now it's putting ads in everything it will rapidly converge to the same practices to optimise shareholder value.

You're not wrong today, but they are expanding their ads department to the detriment of users: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46911901, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46322556, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22501511

Apple's own TOS allows them to datamine your data to sell you ads the same as anyone else.

I don't disagree. They're still a spy company, if we're being cynically reductive.

Is there a way to ELI5 Google's primary business model without it coming across as spying on people?

Very few have the same problem among FAANG and others.

Ads, Google is the world's largest ad company.

Internally they can do anything EXCEPT fuck with the ad revenue. If you get more ways to get data off users and ad views, good.

As if hardware companies don't quite famously include spyware in their products. Everything from phones, cars, fridges, TVs, monitors, speakers, light bulbs, laptops and everything else that supports inclusion of spyware.