The hubris of these companies thinking they can not only survive, but thrive dispite of and not thanks to their users is astounding.

Isn’t… that a reasonable use of the tool? Freeing up people’s time from drone work to do more meaningful stuff?

I’d rather pay for the product than be the product myself and a search engine is the thing I use the most on the internet. And so I became a subscriber. Then I discovered their lens feature and now no other search engine even comes close for me on this and it’s another thing I use multiple times per day.