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Comment by thurn | Hacker News Reader

The idea that Google (or any major tech company!) has ever even considered selling user data is highly damaging to our industry. I don't expect that kind of baseless paranoia on Hacker News.

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Google's whole business model revolves around selling user data. They don't do it directly, handing over browser histories to the marcom group at Pepsico; they do it indirectly, and in a manner that largely preserves privacy. But that doesn't impact the original commenter's point at all. He's right: at Google, you're the product, not the customer.

Agreed, but there's a world of difference between ad targeting and selling data, and public perception to the contrary hurts the web industry.

Can't tell if you are sarcastic or not? No really..

(in case you are not)

Yes Google sells user to their paying customers -- advertisers. How do you think they make all those billions of dollars / year? Why are they providing you with free Gmail, Maps, and high quality search results? The answer is that they sell you to their customers. If you are in gmail and sent your mom an email telling her what kind of printer cartridges to buy, don't be surprised if you see an ad about printer cartridges. They indirectly sold your data "interested in printer cartridges" to their "real" customer -- the company that makes printer cartridges and is looking for someone to buy them.

Are you sure ? Does the data has to be sold ? Can't just an algorithm run through your data and get the most relevant ad ?

They indirectly sold information about you. It doesn't mean that their paying customer will know your gmail address, but their are selling you as a collection of all your preferences to their customers. If their customer cannot be convinced that Google can find out users' preferences very well and target the ads properly, they might choose some other company.

Can you prove that ? I doubt that they sell data, they probably sell the keywords.

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