[skj]

When information, a license, or a service is sold, the buyer now has information, a license (or general right to do something), or has benefited from some service.

Google sells clicks on ads. Once a click is bought, the buyers now has eyeballs on their websites. Not the information about the person doing the clicking. So, the information about the person doing the clicking is not sold.

The drone analogy is inapt.

[duncanawoods]

I'm going to have a last go because to work at google, I believe you have a moral imperative to understand why the analogy is apt.

Selling consequences of information in some very real sense includes the information. In your terms, the "benefit from some service", is a targeted ad which is a causal consequence of user information. A derived work if you like. Information isn't just one specific pattern of bits.

The drone analogy vividly demonstrates how selling a consequence, killing someone in a secret location, really does include their location as an intrinsic part of the service sold even if no-one actually hands out the lat/long.

[skj]

If we want to make the analogy apt, it would be like the mobile service saying "To make a phone call, please first call the kill-yourself company and tell them where you are so they can kill you."

Google does not sell the information. It puts up ads that users may (or may not!) click on. The clicking is the point at which the information transfer occurs, and it is voluntary and transparent. Or as transparent as it can be, anyway - if you are unaware of how the internet works when you click on a link, that does not make Google culpable for presenting said link.

The information Google has about the user is never given to anyone, least of all the ad buyers.