Back when I first started my career, I generally disagreed. My first job was at a connected device startup in the IoT space. The whole ethos around data was pretty good. Maybe it was because the tech side of the company I worked for was 99% ex-gov contractors (aerospace, low level routers, submarines...).

We collected such minimal information. Basically only enough to allow for OTAs, functionality, and debugging. Thinking back, we could've collected so much more.

I remember when Alexa hit the market and we (as a company) thought there's NO WAY amazon was making any money on them.

Today... NO WAY. Along the way the value stopped being "This product is priced so we can make a profit" and became "The data we collect is more valuable than the sale".