In the ad-based business model all the people who use Google's services aren't Google's customers, they're Google's product. Google's customers are the compani

In the ad-based business model all the people who use Google's services aren't Google's customers, they're Google's product. Google's customers are the companies who pay for advertising. We lost the opportunity of not building the web this way. The tracking necessary to process payments is reasonable as-is but you could also pay cash for gift-cards that work just like credit cards. Either way that's nothing like the tracking that happens for targeted advertising.