I don’t want to see any ads either. Even unobtrusive ones. It’s just different levels of annoying and given the choice, I’ll pick zero annoyance. I also don’t want to be the product. Not just as a target for advertisements, but from information gathering for profit.

I do see the problem with this. Most sites are run with the expectation of profit. And while not explicitly my intent, I go out of the way to be as unprofitable as possible to these kinds of business models.

I do opt to pay for a couple of privacy respecting online services and I… rarely but not never donate to sites I use frequently that are privacy respecting and not ad supported. And that gives me some feel goods to support sites and services that align with my values but it’s not really viable for the internet as a whole right? Hoping for some spare change from a tiny fraction of your visitors.

I don’t know what the solution to this is. But I mirror OP’s concerns about this specific thing. I don’t want my browsing to be DRM’d, and I have zero trust for Google. If this happens, they will abuse it.

Edit: Changed organizations to services. Felt more accurate.