[HerraBRE]

I actually feel it's misleading and wrong at a very fundamental level; this was the only thing I disagreed with in the whole press release!

Consumers "pay" for Google's services by giving ads attention so the ads have value and Google can sell them.

All the data harvesting is a means to a end: to make the ads more appealing so you'll click. Google don't profit from the data directly; in fact all the data harvesting and processing is a significant cost factor. There are certainly other businesses that resell data and profit directly from data harvesting, but AFAIK, Google is not really one of them.

It's a bit like saying that you pay a café by letting them observe you while you sit in their chairs. A basic misunderstanding of what's actually going on.

[sweden]

But in order to make the advertising business very profitable (this is, in order to give a reason for other businesses to use Google Ads to advertise themselves), Google needs to know all about you: who you are, where you are, what you like, what you don't like, what you like at certain times, what are your needs, etc, etc.

The real value of advertising is in showing the right advertisement at the right time at the right person.

Personal data is to advertisement what sugar is to candy.

Your analogy with the café is very misguided and not related at all with the situation.

[HerraBRE]

It's still a means to an end. You don't pay with your data, you "pay" by interacting with ads.

Consider that Google actually became super profitable well before all the detailed tracking started. You grossly underestimate the synergy of "people searching for products" and "displaying ads". Everything else is an optimization.

You're describing Facebook... which is no where near as profitable as Google, in spite of much more invasive tracking.

If you never click an ad and use an adblocker so you never even see them, your traffic and your data just cost Google money. They may be able to extract some small amount of value by observing your behaviour and using those insights to improve their products, but they don't make any money until someone pays for an ad.

I agree the café analogy isn't perfect. I was just pointing out that outsiders who don't understand what's going on may fundamentally misunderstand the transaction. You can still provide value to the café by sitting in their chairs if you liven up the place and give them feedback on how to make the place nicer.

But if customers never buy anything, the café goes broke. And people stop interacting with ads on Google, Google does too.

[torrent-of-ions]

No it's not so you will click it. They collect the data from customers and offer it to the advertisers. The data is a big part of the product they sell to advertisers: targeting advertising. They don't sell user clicks (why would anyone pay for that?), they sell targeted advertising.

[HerraBRE]

That is not how Google's business works.

Advertisers quite literally pay for clicks. That was part of how Google disrupted the market back in the day; most other advertising networks were selling "impressions", but Google was so confident in the relevance of their ads that you got impressions for free and only paid when a customer actually clicked on it.

The click is worth paying for, because it is a signal that the user has seen the ad, thought about the ad, and is interested in the ad. Advertising gold.

Obviously Google have many products (they bought Doubleclick an "impressions" company), and there are analytics value-ads and all sorts of things. But the core of their business is still pay-per-click advertising.

Your idea that advertisers are buying raw data is a misunderstanding.