Ads are not only annoying but play an extremely crucial part on tracking you across the web. People defending google cannot seem to wrap their mind around the fact that it's one of the most lucrative way to carry out mass surveillance at scale. Paying for the service only partly avoids the service to stop giving you ads. What about the insane amount of telemetry they collect? It's a lost cause

Thank You for saying this out now. Again we are finally back to may be Pre 2014 HN where we can talk a little about business and money.

Yes, platforms need money. So why should a platform not charging its users be permitted? It's dumping. It's anti-competitive behavior unfairly disadvantaging any other business that wants to enter the market the ad platform is pretending to be in. It also creates a ton of perverse incentives.