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.
You must log in or # to comment.
Well let’s see…
- I’ve used Firefox with uBlock Origins pretty much as soon as uBlock Origins came out. I’m now using Librewolf.
- Im using a YouTube extention that automatically skips sponsers and adreads.
- I don’t use Google for my searches. Haven’t for over 10 years.
- I use Spotify on my PC, with the Bash Spot X patch.
- My OS is also Linux, so no built-in ads.
- On my phone I have AdAway installed.
- I patched my YouTube app with ReVanced Manager, giving me block against ads, sponsers, and adreads.
- I don’t use Spotify on my phone, instead opting to download music I bought from artists (typically Bandcam) or get through Soulseek.
- I use Firefox on my phone too, with uBlock Origins. Did that for nearly as long as my PC.
- I also don’t use Google for my searches there.
I’m very curious about what my value to Google is, considering all that.
It’s crazy that we have to go to that much effort just to have a reasonably pleasant online experience.
Your location data. You help with traffic notifications, harveating of networks in relation to your location. Even if you dont use maps.
What is bash x spot?
I got it reversed, it’s spot x bash. But it’s bash script that modifies the spotify client to remove all ads. Doesn’t give you premium features, only removes ads. The script must also be run every time spotify updates.
I only drive to my work and back, no where else do I actually drive because I’m an introvert
Basically same,
- Linux and Graphene
- IronFox/Zen Browser with Adnauseam, Sponsorblock, DeArrow and ClearURLs
- Mullvad VPN with AdBlock (off because of Adnauseam).
- GrayJay instead of YouTube.
- SimpMusic + Locally downloaded songs for music.
- Local media server for movies
Only places i have yet to tighten privacy (AFAIK) is email and chats (did make a burner acc on Discord and deleted the old one though). I dont use social media apart from the fediverse. All those accounts are deleted.
Update:
I do use K9 Mail and Thunderbird for email clients and F-droid and Aurora Store as an app store replacement.
I want to set up a Jellyfin local media server. As soon as I get my own apartment I’m going to take a serious crack at hosting my own home server for a lot of my needs.
Im running Jellyfin myself. Still havent ported it to my server tho, just running off a disk in my main PC. Whenever i get more storage on the server or just a proper one (currently just running an old laptop w like 500GB storage) I will try to move all of my socker containers and movies there.
I would want to write some kind of roadmap and define all the cloud based services id need, like NextCloud and other stuff id want available remotely, but that would be done tinkering since id have to configure a VPN for it 😬
Why wait? I moves with you!
Bro that’s like my facebook PF…
Since Feb 2025 Google started using browser fingerprinting to track users. While you don’t see the ads, they’re still building a profile on you.
Pretty sure they started that well before 2025.
They specifically waited until after the inauguration to avoid legal pushback. The Google “Code Yellow” started in 2019 that eventually found this as the final solution.
deleted by creator
Also, Ironfox and Cromite are awesome too!
Hopefully Ironfox and Librewolf both replace Firefox itself overtime somehow (Since Firefox new leadership has been enshittifying it), maybe Cromite can do same for Chromium too
What do you recommend for searches?
I have been using DuckDuckGo and SearXNG.
I’ve been using Startpage, it gives me often better results than google does these days. The image search is shit though, have to use something else for that
This feels like a good post to mention AdNauseam! For anyone who wants an adblocker that helps more than just you! It basically blocks ads but also sends a click request to every ad that should have been loaded. The data being sent with this request contains spoofed garbage data that makes the tracking data sets lose value. It also keeps a funny metric on how much the estimated cost for your clicks is :)
it doesnt function with other adblockers though :(
It is a ublock fork, the best adblocker on desktop.
As Pear said, its built on top of uBlock Origin, im pretty sure it has all of these same functionality with element blocking and filters built in.
Ad networks have things like DoubleVerify, Human and Integral which can detect this, and it can cause account bans and captchas as well.
deleted by creator
You use an android because you like it
I use an android to drive advertising revenue down
We are not the same
I use an android because Apple has been insufferable about allowing users to run that they want to run and customize their phone how they want to customize their phone.
Google is now showing signs that they want to do the same.
I will move to a linux tablet, watch and a cellular wifi AP if I have to
You should try GrapheneOS. It has no Google crap installed by default, and if you install Play Services for apps that need it, it will be sandboxed so it can’t track you or limit sideloading.
Not far enough. Google if fucking with their appstore, they eventually want it to be a walled garden. If that happens, developers will be hard-pressed to release versions for both Google and aurora (or f-droid or whatever)
I want chat, I want a working camera, a working web browser and to be able to make and take calls. That’s all doable from Linux today, the battery life just really sucks.
GrapheneOS supports F-droid and essentially all APK files. The built in camera and SMS apps work and so do most IM apps and web browsers.
I’m already looking into it lol. From this point on, every device I purchase needs to run Linux.
As far as I can tell, we’re getting close. The kernel needs more handheld power-saving techniques, and honestly, we need some more small-format current technology devices supported. Everyone is locking everything down.
I’d even roll my own SBC project, but the power situation is still too damn sketchy
We are getting very close. FEX and any Waydroid improvements ValvE upstreams will also help a ton for apps that depend on them. I’ve also had success with setting up suspend-on-sleep on older laptops battery-wise, so you could always try that in the meantime.
I’ve made it as hard as i can to track me. And I will continue to do so. Fuck advertisers.
At this point it has become my hobby
Yup. I made it my life’s work to deprive those cunts like Google of as much money as I can. Fuck them so hard
If I see an ad get though my layers of blockers, I see it as an embarrassment. Usually just means I got to refresh ublock.
You can’t generate ad revenue from me if I have ad blockers.
Until you log into gmail and give them a fingerprint to share around. They still track you unfortunately.
Then how do you support our corporate overloads?
They’ll just have to eat the money they already have.
Let them eat cash,
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.
It would be interesting to calculate the user’s value of the time wasted on this shit.
My guess is that online advertising has a negative return for society as a whole. It should be illegal.
I wonder how much money people have wasted buying my data. I have ad blockers everywhere, I never see a single ad or sponsored message, if their system actually works it should be marked worthless.
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.
Fuck I’m getting rolex ads and nice vacations lately.
From the looks of it I do a lot of “high value” searches and I’m perpetually online due to work. I bet they fucking love me.
Clear cookies and use a vpn to book flights.
And the assholes only give me back like 2 bucks.
Tax them and turn that into a UBI.
High-value, low-value
😑
Google is a femcel
I’m beginning to think Tim Berners-Lee made a mistake inventing the WWW.
Honestly, bbs would be nice for a lot of reasons in … Just such situations as these.
Little ,regional, kinda dumb.
The little mesh radios are pretty interesting technology for the time.
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.
That’s not wasting money, that’s literally generating money for them.
Buying local and obscuring your searches are how you starve the beast.
Oh wait, i forgot i was stupid 😭
Im priceless. Or worthless.
That might be what they pay Google to advertise to those groups. But do they manage to get that much profit out of those advertisements from those groups?
I know it is not true to say that “advertising doesn’t work on me” but I wonder if the revenue the advertisers are getting out of that professional man in MT adds up to anywhere close to $17,929/yr worth of sales of their products/services.
Some people might think it’s nonsense to pay more to reach some group than it gives directly, but there might be a degree of diffusion such that it’s not.
Suppose, that computer-savvy woman is the source of advice for her many friends after trying some things out or whatever.
Suppose, that professional man uses occasionally a free tool for their task, that seems to be “first page in Google”, but is in fact the most familiar from 8 things listed on that first page.
Then they use it again or their coworkers or friends know that the tool exists. Then eventually they might buy it.
It’s all probabilities, but those that spread.
Why did I even write this, it’s obvious.
