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You're right–people often conflate "selling" with "using internally to sell ads." There's a difference, and it's meaningful, but the point is that Google's business model is based on gathering and exploiting as much data about you as possible

That's not true either, but that's a common misconception. Google makes the bulk of it's ad revenue from search ads. Two people issuing the same search query will see the same ads (for the most part). Hence, Google could still make money without user targeting - unlike Facebook.

Two people making the same search query wouldn't even produce the same search results, let alone adverts.

I'm surprised that this comment was downvoted so much. I actually work at Google. I don't know if anyone is still going to read this, but I thought I would comment just in case.

I said "for the most part". There are multiple reasons why different users can see different ads:

Ads might be geo targeted ("Only show this to users in New York.").

There is some stochasticity in the serving process. Ads can run out of budget. Different data centers might have cached different things in cache.

Different advertisers that are eligible to show for a certain query can bid different amounts depending on the user, for example though RLSA [1].

But anyway ads personalization is not essential to Google's business model (except display ads and maybe youtube ads).

[1] https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2701222?hl=en

I like how you say "personalised ads are now essential aside all those times it is". The fact remains, personalised ads is always going to be far more profitable than non-personalised ads. You don't need to be an insider in Google to understand this. Moreover Google didn't even invent the concept of personalised adverts to begin with.

I'm old enough to remember when we had the same arguements about supermarket loyalty cards which track your purchases and sends out personalised deals. Now people just accept that happens but there was a massive uproar about it back in the 80s or 90s (I forget precisely when but it was a good few years ago now).

I honestly don't blame Google for doing what they're doing. It makes perfect business sense. What I do object to is Google employees (assuming you are who you say you are) trying to argue that Google don't make a business from personalised ads when it's pretty easy to prove they do and nearly every single member of HN has observed that it action. For the record, I also object to people argue who "X is definitely not y" while acknowledging that there are a whole plethora of examples where their arguement isn't completely factually accurate - that kind of dumb get out clause is just insult on everyone's intelligence.

Yes. And isn't it also the case that, by offering their very elaborate targeting capabilities to advertisers, they still leak your personal data to 3rd parties, though indirectly? After all, the fact that a certain personalized ad appears in your page confirms to the advertiser that you are in their carefully crafted target group.

confirms to the advertiser

How would the advertiser know? Google is the one serving the ad.

Tracking referals. It's a key part of ecommerce advertising metrics to keep track of who came from what campaign.

(I work for Google, but not on ads and I have no social knowledge)

I think that one thing Google tries to do is to make identifyingly small demographics not possible. As you say, that would leak personal info when the user clicked.

You are right, selling is the wrong term. I will update my comment to use the word "utilising" instead.

Oh, of course. Google is actually really benign. They don't sell your data. They just automatically scrutinize it in unfathomable detail to make as much money as possible when they pimp you out to anybody else who wants to manipulate you.

Please accept our sincere apologies--Google is such a nice company with a 100% ethical business model!

Parents point is valid in so far as that selling really is the wrong term for it.

If Google sold the data, someone else would have it. That would not only be awful from a privacy perspective, it would be desasterous for business.

It's primarily a case for precise language and not something to ridicule.

Like you mention one of the most obvious reasons that Google does not sell user information is because it would not make good business sense. These immense profiles they're building on everybody are part of their 'secret sauce' and simply selling those would not be good for business.

When they're choosing to not engage in behavior that no company in their shoes would engage in, it's hardly praise worthy and I think indeed that ridiculing it as a 'positive' for them is completely fair. So let's change the game a bit. If, somehow, their business changed or evolved such that selling user information directly was a profitable part of some business strategy - do you think they would still choose not to? What if I asked you, not that long ago, whether you think Google would be willing to build a search engine in China completely accepting (and thus arguably implicitly endorsing) all state level censorship engaged in by China?

I do think that Google at one time sincerely held the sort of anti-corporate-establishment view of 'don't be evil.' But it's much easier to moralize when you don't have the option of going against those morals to the tune of billions of dollars accompanied by immeasurable influence.

Don’t be evil ship sailed a long time ago. They’ve demonstrated over and over again that their stock price matters more than privacy of their users.

The way I see it, it’s a race to trillion dollar mark for AMZN, GOOG and MSFT now.

I have little expectations that they’ll do much to reverse their ad blasting and deep tracking trends.

> the most obvious reasons that Google does not sell user information is because it would not make good business sense

On the contrary, it is a good business model and Google does it. They sell ad targeting, and targeting ads is based on accessing personal user data and making its results available to anybody who wants to pay. With each targeting of an ad the ad buyers can track more profiled users.

(I work at Google).

"selling your user data" implies that someone else has access. They don't.

If I target my ads to left-handed Hungarian mimes, and someone clicks on that ad and comes to my site, what do I know about that person? What user data has Google told me about them?

I provided money to Google. Google provided [people, or perhaps bots] and told me they were left-handed Hungarian mimes. The user's information has passed from Google to me. I just tagged that person "left-handed Hungarian mime" in my database.

Now, you can invent new words and call that something other than a sale, but...

The tech industry is great. Package up software, give it a SKU, put it in a store, have people come in, exchange money for it, and walk out: They're very happy to call that a sale, not a license, but a license is what it is. Happy to use the word "sale" when it confuses the customer and benefits them.

But start talking about selling user data to advertisers, nope, don't like the word "sale" any more, even though the advertisers are handing over money and walking away with data they are free to use. Odd.

Ok but is anyone doing that? Even if technically possible is that a violation of the ToS? (I don't know the answer to either of these questions, but I expect that the answer leans towards "no" for both).

>If I target my ads to left-handed Hungarian mimes, and someone clicks on that ad and comes to my site, what do I know about that person?

Nothing, unless they register there, and if your goal is to convert left-handed Hungarian mimes, then you probably know about your target audience already. You've learned something about a tracking cookie. That's only valuable if you can continue to track the user.

They don't sell our data, they rent us out to the highest bidder.

More data means they can match us to clients better and charge a higher price for us.

This captures Google’s and FB’s business model perfectly.

Not matter how you sugarcoat it, if you work for Google or FB or any other ad blasting company, you help further the model of selling data of people’s private lives to the highest bidder and ad spam them throughout the internet for months.

I'm not so sure it's so clear in that page you linked to. Google do also sell the largest analytics/user-tracking platform that exists (Google Analytics). That page you linked to seems to hinge around what constitutes 'personal information' which I'm sure others have differing opinions about but does go back to the parent's point: Google is in the business of selling your data. It maybe does it in a controlled way, segregating by client properties, or removing certain personally identifying information, but it's still selling your data.

It's a shame you're getting downvoted. There's nothing wrong with your comment, and it adds a useful argument to the discussion that's going on here.

I can only applaud Google employees who want to have a meaningful discussion here, and even disclose that they're working at Google.

It looks like they are back in the green now. I appreciate the dialogue it sparked and I can appreciate it takes a bit of courage to take part in a topic that's contentious toward where you work.

Indeed, they don't sell your data. They give it for free through deals such as PRISM.

As we found out, they buy the data - this time from Mastercard and collect a detailed profile of every user, maybe more detailed than 3-letter agencies have.

No they don't sell your data they just sell "access" to your data. The bits don't leave Google servers.

Your assertion and supporting link are nothing more than semantics though. But if those semantics make you personally feel better then fine. But I think there's very few people who think that such a semantic distinction matters.