Even if you’re paying, you’re still the product
The next to last paragraph bothers me:<p><pre><code>    On Hackernews, they think it's "entitlement" to think that you can use free email
    and search engines and expect not to be tracked. The main problem with this line
    of thinking is that even if you had the option to pay for your email and for your
    search engine, some G**gle executive somewhere would mention during a meeting that
    they could add an extra $X million of revenue if they started using data from it
    from targeted advertising.
</code></pre>
Expecting a valuable service with absolutely no consideration in return absolutely <i>is</i> a case of entitlement. If that consideration isn't cash, it has to be something else. If you're paying cash for the service, though, you're well within your right to set expectations on the terms the service is provided on.