> 15 GB is free over at Google. Does that mean my data is really worth $40 a year to them. I do realize this is oversimplifying things...
That's not a valid comparison, the economies of scale Gmail benefits from means it can't be compared with a smaller email provider like Fastmail which has to ammortize the fixed overhead costs over a much smaller user base.
Gmail has over 1B monthly active users, at $40 /user would generate $40B a year on gmail alone, they made $75B Revenue in 2015 (16.3B profit). Google don't break their revenue numbers down but they have 7 properties with over 1B Users where I expect an overwhelming majority of their revenue still comes from Search when users are in the "actively searching" frame of mind and are more likely to purchase goods rather than in Gmail where their primary use-case is email.
That's not a valid comparison, the economies of scale Gmail benefits from means it can't be compared with a smaller email provider like Fastmail which has to ammortize the fixed overhead costs over a much smaller user base.
Gmail has over 1B monthly active users, at $40 /user would generate $40B a year on gmail alone, they made $75B Revenue in 2015 (16.3B profit). Google don't break their revenue numbers down but they have 7 properties with over 1B Users where I expect an overwhelming majority of their revenue still comes from Search when users are in the "actively searching" frame of mind and are more likely to purchase goods rather than in Gmail where their primary use-case is email.