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When your company stores very private info on billions of people, and is actively attacked (sometimes successfully) by the top intelligence agencies of the world[1][2], you have to be extremely careful, and monitor everything.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora

[2] https://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/tech-companies-s...

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Some people might see an irony in your comment.

Economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote in 2009 "...banks that are too big to fail are too big to exist..."

My theory is that the too big to exist theory is now true for basically all the tech giants. Generally, everyone who knows the kind of tracking these companies do (internal and external) agree this is true, except those who benefit from the companies' continued existence e.g. employees, investors, shareholders.

You conveniently forgot consumers.

On the other hand, imagine if the data collection never stops and one of the big companies gets hacked, or faces a serious competitive threat making it more likely to sell its data, starts going out of business, or needs to cooperate by sharing its data in return for government favors, or needs to share data to get access to foreign markets etc. I have a feeling this venerable "consumer" is going to learn a painful lesson one of these days.

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