this is a serious question? Google collects anything and everything they possibly can, from every user who touches any of their software, platforms or devices. They then sell this data on dozens or hundreds of data broker platforms. Data includes your web browsing history, location history, passive microphone recording history and email history ("anonymized" but still meta data)

But what actual examples are there of this? Evidence that they actually do this. Facebook has had a number of big stories and leaks showing they sell info on to other parties, but Google seems to sell advertising access rather then the data itself, which is pretty legit to it's policies.

(And while I'd agree they seem to collect data from anything they possibly can, they seem to poorly underuse that data collection as far as I can tell. I use quite a bit of google stuff and their ads profile for me is still a total mess including things I actively hate. If they struggle with not targeting me for things I've told them I hate, it's hard to feel too worried about how they're going to factor in their passive microphone recording data)

> They then sell this data on dozens or hundreds of data broker platforms.

Oh? Which platforms? How did you come to learn that they were selling data to those platforms? Surely from either the platforms themselves or a respected news article?

> They then sell this data on dozens or hundreds of data broker platforms.

I wasn’t aware of this part specifically, so I’d like to learn more. Has this been covered in the news or something? This seems like a big deal.

I wrote a paragraph about this issue but cut it out for conciseness. I think it is worrying that if data is truly 'the new oil', it's really strange the names of the behind-the-scenes companies are not in the public debate.