Technology

You're right. Not sure why you're downvoted.

Google would be stupid to sell your data. Instead they keep it private, and when people go to Google, they tell them to push ads to certain groups or take surveys from certain groups, and Google does so. They do not hand those advertisers your data, otherwise those advertisers would never come back. They have the data.

I recently learned that one method for companies to get around data selling laws is to give the data away for free in order to attract certain types of advertisers, then, they sell ad slots for people with specific demographics or interests.

They don't sell the data because that is harder to do with laws restricting it, so they just use it as advertiser bait in ways that bypass the law.

Further reading: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/google-says-it-doesnt-sell-your-data-heres-how-company-shares-monetizes-and

The difference is that there are actually companies out there that will sell you the raw data they collected. E.g. your name and address if they have, your browsing history obtained through shady extension and so on.

So there is a difference between selling the data and hoarding it to show targeted ads.

And while both may not be cool, to me anyone with some money being able to buy my data is clearly worse. So it's helpful distinguishing there. It's not all "selling your data". You are also doing your argument a disservice by lumping it all into the same bucket.