Are you sure? Where's the citation to back that up?
What I remember are many products released around that time by Google, et al that were sold to us as: we're making gobs of money off of our core offering (e.g. search + little text-based ads), that we can afford to all this other stuff for the benefit of humanity. So much was sold as "making the world a better place". The other sales pitch we got amounted to, "don't worry about it, we'll monetize later."
Nobody was up-front in those days. Which is why not a month has gone by where ToS or Privacy Policy changes need another click to accept to keep using. The frog was certainly slow-boiled.
I have to laugh at this one [1]. It almost seems reversed these days (not quite, but kinda)
I'll see if I can dig up any press releases or official Google communications about it, but with linkrot what it is, it may take a while. (EDIT: Here's Google's privacy policy when Gmail was released [2])
Much has changed in the nature of the beast but you're right, the terms do state the obvious. Still feels sinister. Reading those old comments and privacy policy brought so much flooding back to me.
The value proposition has changed but not in the way that was feared at the time. We're certainly inundated with ads to a greater degree than it was at the time. They never turned around and charged for it but they certainly require a lot more personal information to have an account these days.
There was so much hate for Microsoft but it was wishful thinking that Google would turn out differently.
What I remember are many products released around that time by Google, et al that were sold to us as: we're making gobs of money off of our core offering (e.g. search + little text-based ads), that we can afford to all this other stuff for the benefit of humanity. So much was sold as "making the world a better place". The other sales pitch we got amounted to, "don't worry about it, we'll monetize later."
Nobody was up-front in those days. Which is why not a month has gone by where ToS or Privacy Policy changes need another click to accept to keep using. The frog was certainly slow-boiled.