[cynicalreason]

ahm .. you mean SELLING, that's what FB does, they have no other product besides their userbase ?

google has been scrutinized in the past, one big difference is google doesn't offer this data to private companies (yeah yeah .. NSA ) and their model never really allowed someone like CA to get their data.

google's original product was search, from that they were able to extrapolate insane amounts of user data that they then used in their biggest product: ADS. but they never provided the USER data, they provided an interface for their ad customers to better target their ads. so in a way google uses the data to create products around it while for facebook users and their data ARE the product.