> What we really should be asking is why is google examining user data at all.
Without reading into the details, I don't think that google arbitrarily examines all user files on Google Drive (and please correct me if I am wrong, but that's what I remember since the last time this discussion was had).
Google only examines files that were shared with other users or were made accessible to others through a shareable link. Which, sorta makes sense, because that's how a lot of people shared illegal content or streamed videofiles (sort of like a personal youtube). And if you don't share those files with anyone and just keep it as your personal cloud drive, I don't think they examine it.
>why on earth would they allow him to use gmail or android?
Google is essentially your mail service (gmail), video platform (youtube), cloud storage (gdrive), and tons of other completely separate services. In physical world, violation of terms of one of the services leads you to being banned only from that service, unless criminal law gets involved. If the law gets involved, then the law can get you banned from using quite a lot of services. But until the law makes the judgement, being banned from a grocery store cannot automatically and without any recourse get you banned from your bank, your car insurance, your mail service, and many other things.
I guess my point on the latter is that no private business (but law) should be able to prevent a person from using multiple completely unrelated vital services. Here are a few scenarios I thought of that would illustrate how it would work:
* An airline banning you for being an asshole on a flight by adding you to a denylist used by other airlines as well? That's congruent with my idea, because it is all within the same service (airlines), and it won't be done automatically.
*A judge completely blocking you from flying by locking you up for participating in terrorist activities? Sure, because the law did it after an investigation and followed proper legal processes.
*Wells Fargo closing down your account because you were an asshole at Kroger when shopping for groceries and got banned from that store? That would be crazy talk.
The only difference between the google scenario and the kroger+Wells Fargo scenario is that kroger+WF are not a part of the same company. But would it be acceptable for WF to close down your account if WF and Kroger were a part of the same parent company? In my opinion, it wouldn't be ok.