remember, it's not just about making up the difference per user in advertising, it's about getting and keeping as many people into their ecosystem as possible.

then they make some cash from selling data, and having more data to scrape to train their models and such. proton isnt making any off your data

it'd be great to be able to easily compare cost and expense, but companies obscure so much in the backend. rental car companies buy discounted in bulk, then sell the cars tens of thousands of miles later at a profit, and that's before any income from rental