Maybe get your government to do this, instead of expecting some random company to do it for free indefinitely? This article could well be entitled "Google were the only people bothering to record our history."
>but to do it themselves would require mandating Google to share the data with them to begin with
The data was already public
Could you link specifically to the datasets about political advertising reach available via that website? I get no results
> The data was already public
Where?
You asked "how could the government do this"? Come on, bro.
>Where?
The linked article explains where they were getting the data before.
And you gave a generic link showing that they could share "data" in general. Not this kind of data.
Like "come on bro" both Ireland and the EU already have generic data portals...
> The linked article explains where they were getting the data before.
Yes, from the company who choose to share the data. There's no way to get the date from inside the company. In order for the government to publish the data they need to rely on the very same private company to supply them with it indefinitely, don't they? Again, "come on bro"...
Google made huge profits on political ads and when it no longer suits them to spend paltry disk space on them, it's dropping them like a hot rock.
Stop pretending like Google was somehow offering a platform that people were freeloading on. Rather, these political ads were 100% the funding that sustains the platform and makes them and all their shareholders money.