[jand]

> So if Google can still track me at the same level, but others can no longer track me, that IS an improvement in privacy.

This is only true if Google does not sell the gathered information to others. If they sell the data, the net privacy gain is nil.

[Hasu]

Google doesn't sell your personal information to anyone. They sell ads that are targeted based on your personal information. Selling your information directly would entirely negate their market advantage in advertising, it would be suicide for Google. Facebook has been known to do this, Google has not.

[chopin24]

Not saying you are one such person, or that you are doing so intentionally, but this argument is a clever sleight of hand employed by surveillance capitalists and their apologists to deflect attention away from the real issue: that thousands of well-paid, highly intelligent engineers devote 40+ hours a week to coming up with ways to influence your behavior.

“Selling personal data” — as if your particular affinity for left handed baseball gloves were of special interest to large corporations — is a red herring. Let’s stop perpetuating it.

[ceph_]

But there are companies that sell personal data. Google is not one of them. The phone companies sell your location. There are regular articles about companies buying up chrome extensions to harvest/sell browsing data. Etc