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Comment by Arnt | Hacker News Reader

This!

Google is the messenger, and blaming the messenger is fine if you want to blame someone but poor if you want a solution.

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But Google has shaped the internet to be the way it is. At some point over the last 10 years they gave up on fighting inorganic seo spam sites and decided to join in and profit off of it.

A messenger who sells your data.

Often asserted by people who sound very confident.

I have a Gmail account that I use only for purchases. A majority of the mail there is about me spending money. A highly valuable consumer, you'd think?

A far as I can tell, nothing about that account has been passed to any third party, for money or for free.

RTFM.

https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6379332?hl=en

I’ve read that page, and I see the part where a third-party will upload their own data to google so that google can target ads more precisely; but I missed the part where a third-party gets access to a user’s data

> A far as I can tell

The operative words.

Well.. it's possible that someone paid good money to learn about that account and then did not try to sell me anything. Do you think that's likely?

It's not 2004, Google has more ways beyond just Gmail to hoover up behavioral data to feed its ad platform. There's Android OS, Chrome, Maps, Youtube and Google Analytics. You live in a panopticon, you just don't know it.

Sure Google advertises. What about that? GP didn't write "advertises" but rather "sells your data".

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