[skierscott]

> I tend to think of most "tracking" not as "stalking" but as "relationship building."

I'm fine with relationship building. Google can give me better search results based on other activity they observe; I'm perfectly fine with that. They're simply trying to better their product for the user.

What I'm not fine with is the fact that Google is an advertising company. We're not the end-users, we're the product. Intuition says Google is selling the valuable information they collect to third-party advertisers. This means that our valuable information is being leaked to third parties I'm not sure I can trust.

At the core of it, I only want to give my information out to parties I trust. I don't care if it's valuable information or not, I just want to be in control. I don't want my info being sold to some advertising company -- after all, I'll only buy their product after I build a relationship with Google and they can provide the most relevant links.

[spot]

> Intuition says Google is selling the valuable information they collect to third-party advertisers.

In this case your intuition has failed you.

[skierscott]

You're right; I was wrong. It makes complete sense for an advertiser to say, "Sell adds to people interested in X" and for i.e. Google to show those ads.

Even for less reputable companies, it seems you're right: it makes more sense to sell ads for a keyword rather than to make the advertisers sort through a mass of data. Is that the case?