The goal is to capture as much revenue as possible. A company would never intentionally limit their revenue intake unless it was absolutely detrimental to the business. Inconveniencing the few customers who use these cards most likely doesn't show up on their radar.
> The goal is to capture as much revenue as possible. A company would never intentionally limit their revenue intake unless it was absolutely detrimental to the business.
Yes they would. Their goal is POWER and NOT dollars, which are worth less and less every day.
Just like corporate controlled mass media, the goal is POWER and NOT dollars. Dollars are the plausible deniability -- "it's just for the money!" is a mis-direction.
Using a privacy card is not an acceptable indicator of fraud or anything in a country with due process and a supposed presumption of innocence.
This is about enforcing approved behaviors in the Corporate Nanny state.
Google is constantly politically defeated by random old people in Mountain View with lots of free time. There is no amount of money you can spent to build an apartment building that might cast a shadow on their house one day a year.
Whether or not they lose revenue by doing this is hard to measure though. They're not just losing the business of the people they ban. They also lose the business of people who consider Google to be unreliable and risky.
In areas where they benefit from their monopoly, such as search advertising, it may not matter much in the short term, because people don't have a choice. But in areas where people do have a choice, such as cloud services or Workspace, it does matter.
It seems like a risky strategy to keep damaging your own brand while relying on monopoly rent to cover up any short term financial impact.
