Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The best outcome is to come up with a fundamentally better business model A fundamentally better business model already exists: make users into customers. Google should charge users directly for the services they use. Then they wouldn't need to resort to all these underhanded tactics to try to monetize their valuable services. They could just monetize them directly. Of course this is highly unlikely to happen now t…
Fundamentally better for whom? Do you think Google has never considered that business model? I think it’s much more likely that they’ve put a considerable amount of effort and research into it, and concluded that their current business model will let them extract the most money from their products. That’s why we need regulation. Under these market conditions, Google’s business model does appear to be the best for the…
In the long run it's better for everybody. But it is true that "the long run" can be pretty long.
> Do you think Google has never considered that business model?
I think Google probably considered it early on but found it easier to go the way they actually went. But "easier" is not the same as "best in the long run".
> their current business model will let them extract the most money from their products
Google doesn't have products, they have services. And of course, since their services are free to users and users are now addicted to that, they can obviously extract more money with their current business model since they have made a concerted effort to make the "users as customers" business model impossible.
However, their current business model was being built during the same time period when "Don't be evil" was still the company's motto and still apparently taken seriously by company leaders. Which means those leaders were either very disingenuous or delusional. Because addicting people to a free service and then exploiting them and their personal data in order to make the money they can't make from the users directly, as customers, is evil. And trying to keep their current business model propped up in the face of users becoming increasingly aware of the ways in which they are being exploited, is only going to force Google to be more and more evil. Sooner or later, if it doesn't change, it will kill Google as a company.
> That’s why we need regulation.
Regulation won't fix this problem. Corporations can always either buy their way around regulations (oh, another million dollar fine because we broke regulation XYZ about exploiting user data? just rounding error in our accounting) or buy enough influence to get the regulations written so they don't actually impose a burden on them (but do impose a huge burden on potential competitors, the new startups that would otherwise be finding ways to disrupt Google's current business model, since users are clearly becoming dissatisfied with it).
The only thing that will fix this problem in the long run is for users to realize that there is no such thing as a service that is (a) free and (b) valuable. We are going to pay the costs somehow. The simplest way to pay them--with money--is also, in the long run, the best.