If they are using it to advertise to you, then it isn't "free" in my book.
My point is, you always pay for something. In the case of Chrome, surely you don't believe that Google has no self-interest in building Chrome?
I have an open source project. I don't advertise on it. I give it away freely and happily, knowing I gain no revenue from it.
> My point is, you always pay for something. In the case of Chrome, surely you don't believe that Google has no self-interest in building Chrome?
It's clear that they have a self interest.
Both are services (Chrome's a lot more than use an executable, does sync'd data, etc), that you don't exchange money with in return for functionality.
We're talking about advertisements and the advertisement's only one one page. The scope of the actual advertisement is roughly the same as it is on HN. The fact that an advertisement in the default tab of a browser is likely to have more viewers is irrelevant.