I realise that Google places ads in the native Gmail environment. However, when using a third party front end to embed the Google services, how does the company make money off that? When I use Thunderbird to access Gmail or the Google Calendar or when I map my Google Drive to the file explorer, how can Google profit from this kind of use?
Every little bit your device sends to google is being used. Your IP, mac address, email contents, cookies (now kinda phased out by fingerprinting), phone number, etc