> Do you believe it to be mistaken? Yes, Google doesn't sell personal data.

Its core business is selling products whose entire value would be negated if it sold the data behind them, so it really wouldn't sell the data.

On top of that, I think it's a mistake to say that they are buying Fitbit for data anyway. They are buying Fitbit for a toehold in the wearables market; while this probably has some data value, it's pretty clearly part of their effort to build up direct sales of consumer products as a revenue stream.

It's hard to believe that the data in my exercise tracker has real, fundamental worth when I see so much targeted advertising that fails to leverage the data they already have. I suppose it doesn't matter to Google if someone buys a location-specific ad for a place I used to live in despite them knowing where my phone, purchases, and electoral record say I live but then why would them knowing my heart rate help them if they already know I bought a bicycle, search about bicycle parts, frequently use bicycle maps, and travel at about 15 mph?

> when I see so much targeted advertising that fails to leverage the data they already have.

Targeted advertising is far from the only thing Google wants data for.

Well advertising is over 80% of their Q32019 revenue, what else do they want it for?

Research.

From Google's privacy policy:

We don’t share information that personally identifies you with advertisers, such as your name or email, unless you ask us to

The problem isn't just their sharing the data (although you'd be naive to assume that the data they collect isn't being turned over to at least the US government) it's the collecting and storing of that data itself that is problematic. The fact that they're using that data to manipulate us via advertising isn't much better.

The presence and centralization of the data makes it a very juicy target for all kinds of evil people.

But, like most companies, Google defines PII to exclude items (such as the Android advertising ID, for instance) that are PII.

We all know it's possible to identify you even without name or email, given enough data.

If it was easy, advertisers would be doing it already. Google is highly motivated to keep your data fire-walled from advertisers.

Except that statement is just wrong and misleading. Your personal identifying information is all the metadata that can be aggregated and intersected to directly identify you, your name just is a number in the database but it's directly identifying and tracking _you_. Google doesn't care about selling your name or email, that's not valuable to them or advertisers.

And "unless you ask us to" is the default behavior of almost all google products. You have to ask them not to, sometimes under penalty of law (GDPR), before they actually change their behavior.

"unless you ask us to" - it's defined in the privacy policy and clearly says it's due to the user taking an explicit action.