If Gmail proved anything, it was that people would, for the most part, accept any terms of service. Or at least not care enough to read the fine-print closely.
I'll blame the early internet. So often stuff was for free, either due to the dot com bubble or just because someone wanted to create something.
More often than not the second one.
I mean, there were pages full of flash video games and animations with that sole purpose, no ulterior intentions.
When google came around, it too seemed amother neat free thing.
And they also had a “don’t be evil” slogan that existed until the founders stepped away. Google pretty immediately went to build the great firewall of China so the free ride was over a long time ago.
So much of the early internet was free because we all had so much trouble convincing anyone that it was worth investing in or even paying for. I mean… people hardly noticed it was there, seeing it was difficult and expensive, and developing what we now know as the internet was at least a decade and a trillion dollars away. Oh, and, no one believed in it or thought it was worth it. Everyone needed convincing.
Even if it weren't free companies would likely have moved towards collecting data. Just look at how the price tag of cars doesn't protect you from not being a product.
Hey member when they drove around and sucked up everybody’s wifi and (where possible) password? And then they were like “oh well if you don’t want us to use your network in our data then it’s on you to keep it out” member that.
“Security” idiot bro they hired at a bank* I used work for would drive around with a laptop and his buddies to break into WiFi as a hobby. It was truly disturbing, but he was an entitled ass so maybe not surprising.
And the company came under fire again in 2018 after The Wall Street Journal revealed it was allowing third-party developers to trawl users’ Gmail inboxes, to which Google responded by reminding users it was within their power to grant and revoke those permissions.
So you can remove those permissions, just that it's enabled by default. Shitty design, but it's not mandatory to enable those, just like how you are not forced to use edge when you get a Windows computer.
You kind of are forced to use Edge though. There are certain functions via which Edge and only Edge will always launch. F1, the help button, is bound to a function that launches Edge anywhere in Windows Explorer, so you have a hotkey that cannot be rebound ready to pop Edge into your face at any time if you happen to fat-finger it.
The only way you can prevent it from launching Edge is either to intercept the keystroke with AHK or similar, or remove Edge in an unsanctioned manner that requires deep system fuckery, which will often be reversed on the next system update. There are other links within the system settings dialogues that do this too.