You are paying them, indirectly. You are giving them information about yourself and your interests, which is valuable to them. Google would provide good custo

You are paying them, indirectly. You are giving them information about yourself and your interests, which is valuable to them. Google would provide good customer support if they cared about maintaining goodwill with the public. And, looking at some other replies here, it seems they do try (to some extent). They're not stupid. But articles and threads like these are a PR disaster, and they will hurt their bottom line in the long run. They do not want people switching to another search engine or telling their friends to boycott Google or Google's advertisers.