And the potential use of this data by governments around the world for less innocuous purposes than "showing relevant ads".

It is not too surprising that companies who can profit from it push the data collection as far as they can. It is more surprising/troubling how the people in general seem to either have completely capitulated due to the generalization of the data collection... or fail to understand the implications it can have.

Thankfully some people in EU courts still think that privacy is a right.