The Price of Free

This episode looks at a report from Proton claiming that Google users carry an invisible price tag — some valued at around $19,000 a year to advertisers, others at just $34 — and what it actually means to use a "free" service.It touches on a comparison drawn from the eyewear business: just as the cost of materials is only a fraction of what a customer pays for frames, Google's real product isn't search or email — it's the accumulated data of every search, every video watched, every location logged. The difference, as the episode notes, is that eyewear customers know what they're buying.There's also a moment with a daughter asking why YouTube is free, and a candid answer: it isn't. The follow-up question — "So how much am I worth?" — lands with a quiet kind of weight.A book read about ten years ago described the internet as a class system where understanding the mechanics gives you an edge. That idea resurfaces here — the small but real difference between using a service knowing your data is the currency, versus using it vaguely, because it seems free.A quiet reflection on what it means to pay attention to the price of things, even when that price is yourself.