I'm not sure why you're going so hard in the paint to be pedantic but sure, Google doesn't literally sell their exact byte-for-byte data, what they sell is a service that is functionally a few translation layers removed from their actual database. This is pretty much how all advertising SaaS works. When I wrote my comment, I was writing to an audience that I assumed was well aware of this given that most of us work in tech.

You can use that service to get enough context clues about certain targets to identify someone [0] [1]. Will most advertisers do this? Not five years ago but it's vanishingly easy now to get an LLM to gin up bespoke algorithms that will do it for you. And the door between Google's servers and federal LEOs has no latch and they share plenty of byte-for-byte data with agencies like ICE (which is literally one of my links).

I don't understand the point of being so hyperfixated on word choice since this is just Hacker News and not a court of law. But I suppose everyone makes their choices for a reason even if that reason has more to do with some reactionary and emotional outburst rather than any actual substantive additions to the discussion.

[0] https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.04031

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/google-dv360-banned-audience-seg...