this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2023
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[–] [email protected] 68 points 11 months ago (28 children)

Yeah that’s because they can’t sell your location data to the police.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

And also because Google doesn't sell data.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Hahaha. That’s a joke right?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Do they sell data or sell services using data they collect? Honest question.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I believe generally not. They sell the results of processed data, but the data is their golden goose. Why sell it wholesale, when you can charge for every use of it?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That's what I thought. So they do in a sense sell our data but not directly.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I think they profile individuals and sell those profiles to ad companies, or in the case of google (ad company AND source of data) they pair ads to devices that fit a profile for the ad, like "rides a bike", "risk averse", "owns several cats" would be a profile for an ad selling cat bike seats that can hold 4 cats. That's one way of using the data but there are many more, each more nefarious than the previous one, I guess culminating with Cambridge Analytica, especially their African endeavours.

Btw is your username in reference to the band can?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Btw is your username in reference to the band can?

Yes it is! You're only the second person to catch that in my 6 months here.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Google is the ad company. They don't sell their primary business advantage to competitors.

CA bought data from Facebook, not Google.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You'd be surprised how blatantly companies sell very personal data on a person. Google's not going to do it openly because of pr, but a little subsidiary might

Google probably isn't going to sell everything, but it's pretty likely there's an offshoot company who will sell individual data.

Their data is indeed their golden goose, but if they sell data for individuals at $300 or even $10 a pop, no one is going to get enough of their dataset to compete. They could even rate limit... Although if companies start to pay a billion or 10 to get full data dumps on a country, they might refocus on collection.

After all, the data isn't the true golden goose... It's the golden eggs that they process and sell. It's their ability to collect data that's most valuable

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I challenge you to produce a shed of evidence that Google sells user data.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Here's a list of examples where Google was examined by the courts The first search on the topic I've made

I don't have a smoking gun for you, but I've got a dozen lawsuits saying that Google is lying about their assertion that they don't sell user data

It's not proof, but it's very telling... I'm not saying that Google is directly selling user info, I'm saying that you can buy a list of credit card purchases made by any individual from Equifax for $200

Google isn't selling information directly, but it sure as hell seems like they're selling it indirectly

I haven't looked into the issue deeply, but a casual search has only reinforced my opinion

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

You think Equifax is buying data from Google? About credit card purchases? Google doesn't even have access to that kind of data. It's credit processors and credit bureaus that are selling you out. Credit bureaus openly do what people accuse Google of doing, yet the complaints about selling data are always directed at Google. People running credit bureaus must be laughing their asses off.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Where do I go to buy a list of your location history off Google if it's not true?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Ok I just went down a very deep internet rabbit hole and went from believing google definitely sells data to it doesn't sell data to it sells data (kinda). I'd recommend this article on RTB's which explains how google advertisements actually work and how they leak your data (including your location).

I'd also recommend watching the short video by Brave linked in the article - I didn't understand the first part but the actual article explains it quite well, the end is the juicy part.

Hope this helps!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That was quite informative! Thank you for the article.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

If anything they'd be buying since they're the ones presenting ads... The whole data selling discussion online is always ridiculous. Who are these mystical data buyers ready to shell out billions for crappy "data" (does anyone participating in these discussions actually have a definition of what they think this ridiculously non specific ""data"" even is?) to present slightly better ads to users? Why would Google sell this data, shouldn't they want to keep it to themselves?

[–] Still 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

selling your data refers to people buying ads and being like I want to show my dog food ad to 100,000 people who have a dog, and then Google only shows the ad to people who have a dog

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago

That's not what selling is. At all. Selling implies that any random person with money has access to data about you.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I know of a SaaS company that charges for their products to end users for a monthly fee. They make significantly more money selling the data of their users to 3rd parties than they do from subscriptions. Also, they figured this out after the fact, it wasn't a core business component when they launched, but they still ended up raising the monthly fees due to "inflation".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

You don't kill the golden goose.

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