Even that's not accurate. Advertising is selling access to people matching a certain demographic profile to advertisers.
They maintain a demographic profile (arguable: how accurate and comprehensive it is) by way of this line of business, but at no point is that profile sold to advertisers.
At no point has Google, or any other reputable ad network, had a system whereby you can download the information, personal or otherwise, of a few million people.
This is misleading and hyperbolic. Stop it.
If you want a view as to what advertising is actually like and what an advertiser can actually see, go sign up for Adwords and step through the process. I guarantee it is not as sketchy as you make it out to be.
(Tedious disclaimer: my opinion, not my employer's. Not representing anybody but me. I work at Google, not on lawful intercept.)
That's not what this article says. This article is about what happens when the government lawfully issues a warrant to obtain somebody's private data, and orders a private company to give them the data. When this happens the company has some rights to recover their costs from the government.
You may not like what the US government is doing here. I certainly don't. But it's still the law, and companies that operate in the US have to comply with it.
>But it's still the law, and companies that operate in the US have to comply with it.
It's interesting that you guys figured out how to circumvent the US tax law, by hiding money in tax havens. I guess dodging the NSA warrants is not a priority.
Warrants are comparatively straightforward. The paper says "jump", you say "how high?" or else. In any case, handed a warrant signed by a judge (kangaroo FISA court or otherwise), you hand over the info first and fight it later. Anything else is obstruction.
Google is NOT in the business of selling information to advertisers. They're in the business of choosing who to advertise products to based on the information they collect and hold onto.
There is a significant difference between the two.
Google is the advertiser. Just replace the word 'Google' with 'Doubleclick'. It starts to make sense.
When you use mail.doubleclick.com for your email, and www.doubleclick.com to search the web, all from your DoubleClick based phone, its pretty easy to understand the situation.
Nobody here is under any misconceptions that Google doesn't get most of their money from advertising - where we diverge is what their overall mission is and how good or bad those ad tactics are, and if they represent a good tradeoff for the services they provide.
Personally, I've got no issues letting them build a better profile in return for some of the best web services out there. I owe my career to the excellence of their search product.
What often gets ignored in that value judgement is that the profile can lead to more relevant search results. (Subjectively, Google's results get better when I'm signed in.)
At least for me, using DDG is like stepping back into the 90's as far as search result quality goes.
