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Comment by jfoster | Hacker News Reader

The sheer resistance to paying for YouTube Premium is proving the need for ads.

YouTube has an estimated worth, if it were a stand-alone company, of $475 billion to $550 billion. I'm sure they'll survive off just fine continuing to sell my personal information just like that always have.

Yes, it's a perfectly suitable model. I don't have a problem with it. (but I do use YouTube frequently enough that I decided to pay for premium)

Google do not, and literally never have "sold your personal information."

They deliver targeted advertising due to the information they have. That's the model. They make literally zero dollars a year selling personal information.

Source? Google is literally an online ad monopoly, and being sued for it. They did track and continue tracking users, and they sell data though their SSP, DSP, ad networks, ad exchanges they own.

That is not "selling data".

That is exactly what I said. They sell targeted advertising.

The data is their golden goose. They only sell the eggs.

Find the webpage where you can buy googles user data. Not where you can buy ad slots, but where you can buy the raw tracking data like data brokers sell.

I'll wait.

Try looking for something like "cia ads track" in your favorite search engine. The data comes with the ads, it's not a secret.

Wait no further: https://ads.google.com/intl/en/home/tools/insights-finder/

Heavily aggregated data. Nothing even close to personally identifying.

Still, it is _personal_ data collected and sold by Google, which was the point raised by gp comment. As for it being personally identifying, the aggregation/pseudonymization/anonymization process doesn't even prevent precise identification [0]. I'd say it's pretty close.

[0]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10933-3

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