this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2026
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Google has a price for you. We found it. (proton.me)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by Deep@mander.xyz to c/technology@lemmy.world
189 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

The Price of Free Google Report.

Proton analyzed over 54,000 demographic profiles using 2025 ad auction data to estimate what advertisers pay to reach different types of Americans. The range is much wider than you might expect.

The average American generates about $1,605 a year in advertising value. A 35- to 44-year-old man in Bozeman, MT, without children, using a desktop and making high-value corporate searches, generates an estimated $17,929.30. An 18- to 24-year-old father in Fort Smith, AR, using an Android phone and making low-value searches, generates $31.05.

That’s a 577x difference between two people using the same free service.

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[–] HertzDentalBar@lemmy.blahaj.zone 27 points 1 week ago

Imagine the amount of resources humanity could have if we just ended this garbage.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 24 points 1 week ago

The top 10% of profiles: heavy desktop users — generate 43% of all advertiser value

Helps explain why Microsoft has started injecting ads into the OS so aggressively.

[–] eleijeep@piefed.social 18 points 1 week ago (2 children)

How much revenue is a person using an ad-blocker generating?

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[–] osanna@lemmy.vg 18 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm beginning to think Tim Berners-Lee made a mistake inventing the WWW.

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[–] arc99@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I expect my price is through the floor. Living in Ireland with ad blocker enabled and Google set to disable ad tracking and personalized ad delivery. Even when I use their YouTube app and am compelled to see ads, many of them are bottom of the barrel garbage for pay to win games / casinos and outright scams because Google can't match a more lucrative campaign against me.

It's funny because I also listen to podcasts on Spotify and the podcasts are so bereft of matching campaigns the ad break starts and stops almost instantly. The only one that doesn't is Behind the Bastards which repeatedly inflicts 2 minutes of plugs for other Cool Zone Media podcasts that I'm habituated to auto skip through.

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[–] InFerNo@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

High-value, low-value

😑

[–] SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

Google is a femcel

[–] morto@piefed.social 15 points 1 week ago (7 children)

A desktop user is worth 4.9x more than the same person on Android

This one is really interesting. If using a desktop is more valuable to advertisers, including online stores, why the fuck do all sites and services try to push people into using phones by degrading desktop experience!? That doesn't make much sense

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[–] vogi@piefed.social 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Don't wanna see you slacking doing low-value searches! Brb writing a a script generating some high-level net traffic, so they waste more money on me.

[–] hansolo@lemmy.today 12 points 1 week ago (4 children)

That's not wasting money, that's literally generating money for them.

Buying local and obscuring your searches are how you starve the beast.

[–] vogi@piefed.social 7 points 1 week ago

Oh wait, i forgot i was stupid 😭

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[–] MithranArkanere@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago (2 children)

And the assholes only give me back like 2 bucks.

Tax them and turn that into a UBI.

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[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 11 points 1 week ago

Imagine if that $1600 a person was put to anything even remotely useful.

[–] XLE@piefed.social 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

This article eerily reminds me of myself. I just moved to West Virginia after having a child.

Proton Mail’s Born Private lets parents opt a child into an end-to-end encrypted environment from the start

Strange place for an ad for reserving an email address (for up to 15 years?) but I think I'm good, thanks. Baby formula comes first.

[–] RIotingPacifist@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Also their "e2e" is only in the browser, which is only e2e if they don't get a warrant, at which point it's trivial for them to get your browser to decrypt everything for them.

I wouldn't mind Proton if:

  1. Their fans weren't so annoying
  2. They didn't market themselves as more secure than they are
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[–] Gsus4@mander.xyz 7 points 1 week ago

This is just a google adsense sales pitch, lots of those guys will be broke :D

[–] Maeve@kbin.earth 7 points 1 week ago

That's not counting what they get to hand it over to terrorist, police state, zionazi governments, globally. Global West, Gulf states, Levant.

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