[Nadya]

>Google's business model is based on selling user-generated data to advertisers

Important distinction: they use their massive user-data collection as a selling point for advertisers. They do not sell the data directly - they'd prefer to keep a monopoly on the data. Their business model is in selling advertisements. They sell advertisements because they have a massive user-data collection to target those ads towards.

[walterbell]

Thanks for the distinction.