Don't blame Google.
The following is familiar to many:
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
A forgotten extension of this is:
Expecting fools to not act as fools is itself foolish.
Google is doing what Google has always done. If Google does not see a way to profit from it, Google does not do it. Nothing Google makes has ever been free (without cost) - not Gmail, not Google Voice, not Blogger, not anything; sure, the cost is not monetary (at least, not directly), but in every instance this is because Google takes something far more valuable than mere money - and this should scare the pants off anyone who uses ANYTHING Google, including Google's "free" DNS, which is a fantastic way to tell Google everything you and your device(s) do online and exactly when and from where you do it.
Forget cookies. Judicious policing of the data left behind on one's device from prior browsing sessions was too little, too late TEN YEARS AGO.
The real problem here - and the only problem - is so unpleasant and inconvenient for most people that the media doesn't bother writing about it, and don't blame the media either because it's acting the way it always has (look up the front page from a newspaper from the 1800s and it will make what you see today appear downright dignified); the media will not put anything in front of you unless the media believes you WANT to see it AND that it will lead to your support of the media, direct (subscriptions, etc.) or indirect (advertising, social media promotion, etc.). Do not even bother being outraged by this - if you do, you're MISSING THE POINT.
The problem, which is not so much a problem as just a few facts of Reality, is:
The READER/VIEWER/LISTENER is RESPONSIBLE for what he CHOOSES to BELIEVE of what he READS/VIEWS/HEARS. If someone lies to you and you choose to believe him, what happens to you as a result is YOUR fault. If someone passes counterfeit currency to you and you CHOOSE to accept it as legitimate, YOU bear the LOSS. BLAME SOLVES NOTHING. When you blame someone for something, you are effectively admitting you have learned NOTHING and asking Circumstance to give you ANOTHER LESSON. How many lessons do you need?
No two web users see the same web. Even if you've never declared a single preference (and that would be remarkable), you have been identified and tracked and logged and analyzed by the signature of your device (OS, browser, mobile/desktop, various configs including browser tools/extensions/plugins/language packs, ISP, screen size (if you've ever maximized your browser), etc.), IP and its location, DNS queries (from your active browsing/web use AND whatever clandestine app chatter goes on in the background), daily web use habits (timing, frequency, etc.), where you shop, what you buy, the list goes on.
NOTHING IS FREE. EVER. PERIOD. If you disagree, you ARE paying for SOMETHING in a way you are NOT aware of and NEED to figure out WHAT you are LOSING RIGHT NOW because whoever is TAKING it from you VALUES it MORE than MONEY and you may NOT be able to EVER GET IT BACK. MONEY is CHEAP next to what people surrender EVERY DAY online.
For morbid amusement:
Count how many times you see or click a "submit" button in the course of a single day (it's worth noting that the label of the button may be "OK" or "Done" or "Tweet" or "Post" or "Agree" but in ALL cases, the underlying source code refers to the button and its action as "submit"). And what are some synonyms for submit?
Yield, condone, and - my favorite - SURRENDER.
EASY NEVER IS. If you think something is easy, you are not looking far enough ahead. Easy ALWAYS costs more than SIMPLE and the two are NEVER the same. "Feel goods" are not "do goods."
Companies like Google exist because they are ALLOWED to exist. They are NOT brilliant or even intelligent, and have already sown the seeds of their own destruction. They are two-faced, self-serving, predatory entities that would not have an ounce of money or power if people were not ADDICTED to EASY.
It all comes down to LANGUAGE. If you think the words you use mean whatever you intend them to mean, you are speaking your OWN, UNIQUE language that NO ONE ELSE ON EARTH understands, and if you HAPPEN to communicate what you intended, you owe a debt to CHANCE. The SOLE purpose of language is COMMUNICATION, and language ALWAYS communicates. If you like using long words where short words would suffice, you are communicating your insecurity and pretension. If you use words you don't understand, you are admitting to not knowing what you're talking about and having little respect for the time of your audience.
When the police start investigating a crime, they have no idea who committed it. How do they find a suspect? Not by asking WHO, but by asking WHY - because EVERYTHING that ANYONE has EVER DONE has a MOTIVE behind it. Better yet, what makes sense to one human being CAN MAKE SENSE to ANY OTHER human being, though there tends to be intense, reflexive (irrational) opposition to this fact when the motives and/or actions involved are unseemly; words like "crazy" and "evil" are popular choices by people trying to excuse and rationalize their decisions to conveniently ignore the common human traits/elements/desires/needs behind "the unseemly," and this avoidance (aka easy) comes at the cost of having more "unseemly" visited on more victims in the future.
The point is that we humans are not always transparent with our motives. Sometimes we aren't sure of them ourselves, sometimes we don't WANT to know, sometimes we know but don't want ANYONE ELSE to know, and sometimes we don't realize that there even ARE other people who think DIFFERENTLY or who DISAGREE because we spend much of our time in a web-based digital cocoon of our own preferences where the comfortable and convenient (aka easy) feeling of having millions of users* agree with and support our ignorance - as long as our ignorance is the same as their ignorance - is just a click or tap away.
*Not necessarily "people," and the ones that ARE people may not be UNIQUE people. Would you get the same comfort in numbers if chad4415, bongoman7, sarafauxfera, and legionelle were algorithmic projections from a server farm in New Mexico? Can you ever know if they are or not? (Rhetorical.)
There is ALWAYS a person behind the words, and "can't see him" is NOT the same as "can't be seen" or "no one's there" (just like "i couldn't do it" doesn't mean "no one can do it" / "it's impossible," yet which of these do we hear more often? The EASY one? oooOOOOooo.) That person has a motive, a reason for choosing the words you see and the order you read. If you are not asking yourself WHY the words you see are the words you see or WHAT the person behind the words GAINS if you choose to believe those words, you would be BETTER OFF ILLITERATE because at least then you would KNOW that you can't READ and would not be manipulated that way. (Better to be blind and know it than be blind and think you can see; beyond the obvious danger to self in the latter case, what about friends and loved ones to whom one, say, confidently gives a map or directions or a summary of a contract so they don't have to read it?).
Your time is the most precious thing you have. Make sure you're not unknowingly dancing for someone else, because no one will value your time more than you and, unlike money, you can never get it back. (You can make something of loss by learning from it, but that's easier said than done, judging by the popularity of, say, blaming Google for being Google (aka easy) rather than dealing with the uncomfortable fact that you SOLD some part of your time or yourself to Google for far less than it's worth - and converting that frustration into meaningful effort to not make the same mistake again (aka simple).
"Fool me differently" is no better than "fool me twice."
All the best.