I know advertising is usually a necessary evil when using a free service, but if you want to obtain personal information from me, you give me the option to supply it for free or you pay me for it.
We all know what the driving forces are behind all of this though. First, of course, there is money. But another major force is the pay to play nature of government lobbying and bullying. When you are a massive global corp like Google, you have to grease lots of palms to do what you want to do. The grease, so to speak, is access from big G into your company's user records when they want them. This leverages future DoJ decisions, IRS audits, etc. As far as the states go, we live with a government run like the mafia, except Vinny the knee-breaker is now a federal agency that will come to see your business if it does not comply with what the government wants from it.
