> The only payoff is convenience. That's how little people and even businesses value their privacy.

Well that, and after 2+ decades of this, we can pretty much conclusively tell it worked out great for them. They were - and are - absolutely right to "make such trades".

Yes, data leaks sometimes happen. Sometimes they even make noise in the news. And... that's about the end of it. There are no tomb raiders stealing "crown jewels" and "secret sauces" and outcompeting companies on their own turf[0] - instead, there are many success stories of systems, products and businesses that wouldn't be created if not for the ability to outsource data and document processing to cloud services.

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[0] - Except the Chinese, but that's not really about stealing secrets or private data - just that owning the factories lets you iterate on hardware faster (+ it helps to have some healthy disregard for "intellectual property").