Selling access to the user that created the data is the same damn thing for the end user. It's just that in the way Google does it, Google gets paid over and over instead of one time selling a static list.

not it isn't. if you sell the data then it goes into 3rd party hands and out of google's control and they can do all kinds of bad things with it.

'Bad things' are tracking (Google does this), targeted ads (Google does this), selling access to information so others can target ads and drop tracking (Google does this), allowing Governments access to your activities (Google does this)

Exactly what 'bad things' are being prevented here?

The end result is exactly the same for the end user, its simply a question of who is getting paid how much and how often for that information.

there are much worse things, like spamming.

Spamming isn’t bad, spamming can be fixed with a spamfilter.

Selling your age, gender, location, preferences, etc to anyone who books an ad? That’s bad.

They're not selling your personal information to anyone.

You can read more about how online ads work here: https://privacy.google.com/how-ads-work.html

Except to a foreign government that is actively hostile towards my rights.

That’s more than enough.

Because this foreign government is booking ads?

I don't follow your line of reasoning here.

No, they do that in addition to giving information to advertisers.

If any company gives any information about me to a third party, that's already wrong.

And while advertisers don't get the data directly, they get it indirectly. They get the user specification (age, gender, rough location) they bid on, and the IP, and several advertisers even used that to track you between different websites their AdWords ads were shown on.

They don't give your information, directly or indirectly, to advertisers. Using aggregated information for ad targeting isn't "selling" information to third parties, no matter how hard you try to loosely redefine the semantics of the word.

I'd ask how you think they are giving data to foreign governments, but I have a feeling you'll try to redefine "mandatory court subpoenas for individuals" as the same.

And what exactly prevents them from doing the bad things themselves? What is the inherent reason that I should trust Google more than any other business?

they have a track record.

A track record of doing bad things behind the scenes, perhaps?