I thought about switching my email to iCloud but I'm afraid Apple's going to change the domain yet again. And gmail is hella reliable.
Google of old might have done something cool with this info and annotated the purchases with something like "14,391 people bought this for an average of $1.08 less" or "you pay $7.44 per month more than the average Comcast customer in your area" etc.
This is very, VERY subjective. Even if Google did something like "you pay $7.44 per month more than the average Comcast customer in your area" there will be very similar posts detailing how 'Google reads your monthly payment data'.
My point was just that Google gets and (probably) analyzes aggregate payment information but the user only gets what they already know. If Google is sucking up all of that data, they could at least give some insights to users too.
Now I'm curious to know if they're using this info to analyze competitor marketshare and/or set prices for competing services.
We already know they do... They'll even milk companies for money, bet against them, etc. It's clearly they should have their company broken up IMO (and I'm typically a libertarian)
My ancient @mac.com email address still works (I think it's 16 years old now). So does my girlfriend's @me.com. You're worrying about wrong things.
And Apple keeps the old domains, so my me.com email works fine. I never use icloud.com.
Fastmail isn't free, but I think the old adage "if you're given a really cool product for free, then the product us you" applies here. If you're ok with that, that's cool. But if you're not, there are some great options out there.
This is not how it works. More like "we see you desperately need something because of your circumstances and we offer you only the premium price". Not explicitly of course.
While this level of ad targeting is not available, based on the gmails they read, they have it on your profile.
Also, you can always buy your own domain name for a few dollars and take it with you anywhere, hosting with reliable email providers.