Showing ads is not the same as selling data, but it's also not really what google is doing. Google spies on you and uses that data to sell access to you to any company that wants to exploit you. They've also been known to give (not sell) data on you to law enforcement based solely on your location data or things you looked up.

Since we're all dummies and you know the answers, please go ahead and explain how Google goes about selling heavily targeted ads to uniquely identifiable groups, but that they also are not "selling data".

Are we being massively pedantic and saying that it's not actual user data, but rather leveraging said data to sell ads to the anonymized targeted groups, who are actively tracked by Google around the internet so ads can be served up at opportune times in their browsing?

Because that dumb argument is like saying Oxford Dictionary doesn't sell words, they sell definitions; or that McDonalds doesn't sell beef, they sell hamburgers.