I don't understand your example because you don't think it's worth paying for that product and rightfully so. We're talking about something for free here.
I don't see Americans boycotting Xbox or Windows. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple O/S had a less intrusive data mining program. Heck, even our web browsers have it. Have you noticed how the advertisements are tailor linked to websites you have visited? Even our cell phones are all being data mined. I don't really get the faux rage about this.
On a very broad conceptual level, I agree. As you mention, nothing is free. Personally, I would rather pay $60 for the game outright, like a console game. But, that is not how these business models work in the 21st century. Yes, some sort of trade-off should be made in exchange for the game being free.
And that's where the problem lies. What is your personally identifying information (PII) actually worth? The answer to that question, if you ask random people, often depends on their education level and when they were born. Gen X and older generations will place a high value on their PII, while Millennials and Gen Z will not. Why? Because Gen X and older generations grew up in an environment when they had control over their PII. Newer generations ever experienced this freedom and as such are often more likely to freely give away their PII.
Another problem lies in education about PII. Similar to financial literacy, Americans are notoriously poorly educated in such matters and often find little motivation to actually pursue those interests. Thus, they are easily exploited on credit cards and surrendering their PII.
As something I've been trained in all too well, the entire goal of 21st century businesses is to capture data and then monetize it. 21st century businesses focus on creating value, not money. This distinction recognizes intangible assets, most important of which is information. The right information in the right hands at the right time is worth a ridiculous amount of money. Facebook recently paid $22 billion for WhatsApp. Why? Not for the messaging service, that's for sure. They paid that money as a down payment on all the profits they expect to obtain from the information WhatsApp collected on its users. I would expect Facebook's management to target at least $100 billion in revenues from selling that information to advertisers over the relevant lifespan of the acquired information. (As an aside, the professional implications of the Microsoft acquisition of LinkedIn is very disturbing.)
And yes, there is a huge push to convert everything into a service for several reasons. First, is that services can be theoretically be monetized forever, while a purchase is a one-time event. Second, services can be much more strictly controlled by a corporation than via a one-time event. Services always carry the threat of the end-user losing everything at any given time and perpetual lack of ownership that comes with a direct purchase.
In the long run, everything in life is becoming a closed walled garden. Like the adage about the frog in the pot being heated, companies are moving very slowly to take away many of the personal freedoms that people once enjoyed in the digital world to avoid angering the masses. Microsoft tried to close the sale back with the original Xbox One pitch, which backfired immensely. All that did was make the corporations realize that the consumer base is quite there yet. They'll try again in a few years to be sure, if Facebook, Google, or Apple doesn't beat them to the punch first (my money would be on Apple personally, as they already have a decently strong walled garden environment and considerable goodwill with their userbase. Facebook and Microsoft have the hardest road in front of them in this regard).
These are the ramblings of bitter Gen X'r, who has far too much education and seen too much of what was originally thought to be crazy theory become actual reality in his lifetime.
