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by visarga 2851 days ago
> the most obvious reasons that Google does not sell user information is because it would not make good business sense

On the contrary, it is a good business model and Google does it. They sell ad targeting, and targeting ads is based on accessing personal user data and making its results available to anybody who wants to pay. With each targeting of an ad the ad buyers can track more profiled users.
1 comments
joshuamorton 2851 days ago
(I work at Google).

"selling your user data" implies that someone else has access. They don't.

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jellicle 2851 days ago
If I target my ads to left-handed Hungarian mimes, and someone clicks on that ad and comes to my site, what do I know about that person? What user data has Google told me about them?

I provided money to Google. Google provided [people, or perhaps bots] and told me they were left-handed Hungarian mimes. The user's information has passed from Google to me. I just tagged that person "left-handed Hungarian mime" in my database.

Now, you can invent new words and call that something other than a sale, but...

The tech industry is great. Package up software, give it a SKU, put it in a store, have people come in, exchange money for it, and walk out: They're very happy to call that a sale, not a license, but a license is what it is. Happy to use the word "sale" when it confuses the customer and benefits them.

But start talking about selling user data to advertisers, nope, don't like the word "sale" any more, even though the advertisers are handing over money and walking away with data they are free to use. Odd.

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joshuamorton 2851 days ago
Ok but is anyone doing that? Even if technically possible is that a violation of the ToS? (I don't know the answer to either of these questions, but I expect that the answer leans towards "no" for both).

>If I target my ads to left-handed Hungarian mimes, and someone clicks on that ad and comes to my site, what do I know about that person?

Nothing, unless they register there, and if your goal is to convert left-handed Hungarian mimes, then you probably know about your target audience already. You've learned something about a tracking cookie. That's only valuable if you can continue to track the user.

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