I believe generally not. They sell the results of processed data, but the data is their golden goose. Why sell it wholesale, when you can charge for every use of it?
I think they profile individuals and sell those profiles to ad companies, or in the case of google (ad company AND source of data) they pair ads to devices that fit a profile for the ad, like “rides a bike”, “risk averse”, “owns several cats” would be a profile for an ad selling cat bike seats that can hold 4 cats. That’s one way of using the data but there are many more, each more nefarious than the previous one, I guess culminating with Cambridge Analytica, especially their African endeavours.
Btw is your username in reference to the band can?
Ok I just went down a very deep internet rabbit hole and went from believing google definitely sells data to it doesn’t sell data to it sells data (kinda). I’d recommend this article on RTB’s which explains how google advertisements actually work and how they leak your data (including your location).
I’d also recommend watching the short video by Brave linked in the article - I didn’t understand the first part but the actual article explains it quite well, the end is the juicy part.
If anything they’d be buying since they’re the ones presenting ads… The whole data selling discussion online is always ridiculous. Who are these mystical data buyers ready to shell out billions for crappy “data” (does anyone participating in these discussions actually have a definition of what they think this ridiculously non specific ““data”” even is?) to present slightly better ads to users?
Why would Google sell this data, shouldn’t they want to keep it to themselves?
selling your data refers to people buying ads and being like I want to show my dog food ad to 100,000 people who have a dog, and then Google only shows the ad to people who have a dog
I know of a SaaS company that charges for their products to end users for a monthly fee. They make significantly more money selling the data of their users to 3rd parties than they do from subscriptions. Also, they figured this out after the fact, it wasn’t a core business component when they launched, but they still ended up raising the monthly fees due to “inflation”.
Hahaha. That’s a joke right?
Do they sell data or sell services using data they collect? Honest question.
I believe generally not. They sell the results of processed data, but the data is their golden goose. Why sell it wholesale, when you can charge for every use of it?
That’s what I thought. So they do in a sense sell our data but not directly.
I think they profile individuals and sell those profiles to ad companies, or in the case of google (ad company AND source of data) they pair ads to devices that fit a profile for the ad, like “rides a bike”, “risk averse”, “owns several cats” would be a profile for an ad selling cat bike seats that can hold 4 cats. That’s one way of using the data but there are many more, each more nefarious than the previous one, I guess culminating with Cambridge Analytica, especially their African endeavours.
Btw is your username in reference to the band can?
Yes it is! You’re only the second person to catch that in my 6 months here.
Google is the ad company. They don’t sell their primary business advantage to competitors.
CA bought data from Facebook, not Google.
You don’t kill the golden goose.
Where do I go to buy a list of your location history off Google if it’s not true?
Ok I just went down a very deep internet rabbit hole and went from believing google definitely sells data to it doesn’t sell data to it sells data (kinda). I’d recommend this article on RTB’s which explains how google advertisements actually work and how they leak your data (including your location).
I’d also recommend watching the short video by Brave linked in the article - I didn’t understand the first part but the actual article explains it quite well, the end is the juicy part.
Hope this helps!
That was quite informative! Thank you for the article.
Welcome! :)
If anything they’d be buying since they’re the ones presenting ads… The whole data selling discussion online is always ridiculous. Who are these mystical data buyers ready to shell out billions for crappy “data” (does anyone participating in these discussions actually have a definition of what they think this ridiculously non specific ““data”” even is?) to present slightly better ads to users? Why would Google sell this data, shouldn’t they want to keep it to themselves?
selling your data refers to people buying ads and being like I want to show my dog food ad to 100,000 people who have a dog, and then Google only shows the ad to people who have a dog
That’s not what selling is. At all. Selling implies that any random person with money has access to data about you.
I know of a SaaS company that charges for their products to end users for a monthly fee. They make significantly more money selling the data of their users to 3rd parties than they do from subscriptions. Also, they figured this out after the fact, it wasn’t a core business component when they launched, but they still ended up raising the monthly fees due to “inflation”.