Them having my data makes my life easier.
See, that is where you are wrong. Like so many other people, you are suffering from the delusion that tech companies use innocuous data in innocuous ways. Do you even comprehend the sheer volume of data, much less the organizational complexity, these companies collect?
Wow, if only when I had gotten out of the Marines I had chosen to get my Masters in Applied Analytics with a certificate in data analysis, and if only I went to work every day and used such data in my day to day duties.
Oh wait, I did do that and I do that every single day. My data is a bit more focused on the Ag industry, and even you would be surprised the by sheer volume of it.
It knowing the sheer volume of amount of data that makes me not really give a shit about it. My data is just on out of billions of bits floating around.
There's an old saying that everyone in the world is connected through no more than six degrees of separation. That may be true, but under normal circumstances the average person would be hard pressed to figure out the line between themselves and any other random person. But the volume of data held by any one of the major data companies nowadays allows these companies to know everyone you know. Not because you told them. That would be too human. Instead, they can automatically sift through 6 million degrees of separation, apply thousands of algorithms, and discover who knows who. Now what possible use is that to you? None. But it's useful as **** to companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon.
On sites like LinkedIn it is of great use to me as those algorithms find connections I would not have made without them. Other than that, it does not need to be helpful to me, it is their services that are helpful to me and if them gathering all that day allows me to have their services, let them have at it.
Companies aren't collecting data to make your life easier. It's neither their purpose, nor the end result. In fact, most of what these companies do nowadays actually makes things harder. They then leverage their horizontal reach to effectively force you to continue engaging with them in ways that benefit them, while creating the illusion that they are benefiting you because the intentionally complicate your efforts to avoid complying with their interests. An example is how Google penalizes businesses that don't use GSuite, by forcing non-GSuite originating mail to meet higher thresholds to avoid being filtered as spam.
These companies provide me with a service, a service that is for the most part totally free to me. That they do these other things along the way to make themselves very profitable, again is not a concern to me at all. My company uses are collected data in many ways the benefit our company outside of the benefit we give to our clients. None of them harm them in any way, but they are not done for them.
How does it benefit you for Google to read your emails? It doesn't. Not at all. All it does is help Google figure out better ways to hack the human brain and use brain stem triggers in advertising.
I neither benefit nor am I harmed by this. Google does not know who I am, I am merely one in trillions of pieces of data. If if allows them to better their company and make more money that actually helps me as I own a fair bit of tech stock including Alphabet and Amazon among others.
Now Google, and morons like you that don't have enough of a spine to stand up for yourself, often like to claim that Google just wants to serve you relevant ads. This is, of course, bullshit. It's not that Google wants to know what you like so it can serve you what you like. No, Google wants to tell you what you like, so that Google can funnel whatever makes them the most money.
What makes them money helps keep all the things I use from them free, I am ok with that. I do not fear companies making money as you seem to do.
There is no benefit to you. Why the **** would they want to benefit you? You are a ******* cow. You're the piece of ******* meat that is served on the dinner table. You're cheerfully walking into the slaughterhouse every single day, and you're stupid enough to think that it's making your life easier
My my, someone got up on the wrong side of the computer this morning.
These things make my life easier in a multitude of ways.
I can get in my car, plug in my phone and tell it to give me direction to Ponte Verda Florida from my home. In seconds I have the route laid out and if along the way something changes like an accident or new construction, they tell me and I can alter my route if I choose to. I am old enough to remember when a 7 state trip took 7 maps with routes highlighted and if you made a wrong turn you were toast.
I can have my hands elbow deep in some dough and need to kneed it for 10 minutes and I can say "Alexa, set a timer for 10 minutes" and do not need to stop what I am doing, wash my hands and twist the timer. While I am working away in the kitchen I can with a word change songs or even stations.
When my daughter got her official job offer I could open Google and find the closet florist to her apartment and have flowers to her in two hours. Considering she lives 5 states away that used to be a much harder thing to do.
My son is a Type-1 diabetic, thanks to these tech companies he has a meter on his body that allows me to see his blood sugar and will send my phone alerts in case he, as teenagers often are, are too engrossed to notice his blood sugar is too high or too low and can text him and tell him to either eat or give himself more insulin. This was science fiction less than 10 years ago.
You fear big data because you do not understand what it is. And the funniest part of all, is that despite all your rantings you give them data every time you use a phone, or a credit/debit card, type a post on this forum, or any of 1000000 other things.