Google does not sell individual's data to businesses. Where do you even get that notion?

Defacto, yes they do, that’s the entire value proposition of their advertising model — that they can target customers better than any other platform due to buying intent signals from search queries.

When companies buy ads with Google they’re quite literally bidding for microtargeted user intent data.

That is not “de facto” selling data about an individual to other businesses.

No one can go to Google and buy information about a specific person.

I think we’re just arguing semantics.

No, you can’t buy user data on 1 specific person (then again, there’s many examples of people buying ads on a persons name to catch them googling themselves), but you can buy user data on small groups of people.

> there’s many examples of people buying ads on a persons name to catch them googling themselves

What does this mean? What is the value of "catching" someone googling themselves?

No you can't. It's not semantics. It's reality. You can't buy data on people or groups of people from google any more than you can buy data on people from NBC, ABC, CBS. From TV stations you can buy ads during specific programs. That's it. From Google you can buy ads. You can not buy data. Data is something you can do something with on your own, analyse it, etc. Google does not give you data.

Google will let you target on the following. Especially by combining criteria you can narrow things down to very small specific groups of people. If a person in that campaign then clicms and enters a name and email I have a better profile on them as a person than many of their neighbors.

Demographics: Target users based on age, gender, parental status, household income, and more

Interests: Target people based on their interests, even if they're visiting pages about other topics

In-market audiences: Target users who are actively looking for products or services similar to yours

Custom intent audiences: Create and target audiences based on their search behavior and interests

Remarketing lists: Reconnect with users who have previously interacted with your website or app

Customer match: Use your first-party data to reach and re-engage with your customers

Similar segments: Expand the reach of your best-performing audiences by targeting new users with similar characteristics

Affinity audiences: Reach people based on a holistic picture of their lifestyles, passions, and habits

Life events segments: Target users

Not sure what point you're trying to make, though: you buy ad placement from Google, not data about people. Sure, you can make the inference that people who visit your site via a Google ad fall into one of the categories you've targeted (though you won't know which one, unless you've only chosen one), but that's it.

Depends… if you run an ad server then you can get some information on who sees the ads

You can target all and only all criteria at once so only people who fall into all criteria will see the ad. A variation may target a different group and have its own tracking.

If they see the ad they fall into the category combination I specify. If they click the ad then I known all of that stuff about a visitor because I know which visitors clicked and which found their way outside of ads. If they signup or enter email or anything like that then I know exactly who they are for most people. Even if I have only an email but no name I can create a shell profile and use a data broker to find the name behind the email a lot of the time. Then I have everything tied to a person.

Multiply this times thousands upon thousands of ad impressions across multiple campaigns and you can bud a pretty good database with highly specific data. Sure 100% accuracy isn't guaranteed but neither is it guaranteed through more direct data brokers.

I don’t think you understand how Google ads work. Here’s a super common example:

- I sell red bowling shoes

- I pay Google for access to anyone searching for ‘red bowling shoes’

- Once they land on my site I know who came via the Google ad (via the URL params)

- A certain percentage converts, and I get their personal info and payment info

I personally don’t think there’s anything wrong with that chain of events! It’s a win-win for both buyer and seller.

However, to argue that no data was sold is disingenuous at best. Google is the monopoly broker of the intent data on every buyer in the world.

Why should I let Google profit off of my thoughts/interests? Why shouldn’t I be making the money that the bowling shoe manufacturer paid to access my thoughts/interests?

> - I pay Google for access to anyone searching for ‘red bowling shoes’

You pay to show your website to people searching for red bowling shoes.

> However, to argue that no data was sold is disingenuous at best.

No user data has been sold.

I don't really see how you're coming to the conclusion that chain of events constitutes the sale of user data. Google has sold ad placement, not user data.

When a TV station sells ad time to a company, and then someone sees the ad, comes into the store, and says "hey, I saw your TV ad while watching Law & Order", we don't say that the TV station has sold data to the merchant.

They likely can, even if indirectly. [1]

> I'm going by this document from the Irish Council for Civil Liberties and a lawsuit brought against Google, signed by member of Congress, that alleged data brokers are "siphoning" off bid-stream data and reselling it . It makes the claim that U.S Dept of Homeland Security uses real-time bidding data for warrant-less phone tracking.

> https://www.iccl.ie/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Mass-data-bre...

> https://www.tampabay.com/news/2021/05/07/google-selling-user...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41762264

GCP isn't a B2B product?

Yes but it's tiny compared to Google Revenue and when I messed with it, it wasn't 100% certified for Government use. Meaning if you used it for Government, you could only use select products vs Microsoft and Amazon which certified almost all their products.

It was 10B out of 84B in the latest quarter and growing a lot faster than other revenues. It's not really what I would call tiny.

GCP doesn't make money

Neither does azure if you remove AD\exchange from it.

Yes it does.

What data does Google sell exactly? As far as I know they sell impressions.