They sell *targeted* advertising. And to target effectively, you need personal d... | Hacker News

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icebraining on Sept 20, 2011 | parent | context | favorite | on: Richard Stallman: “Android Phones Do Not Respect Y...

They sell targeted advertising. And to target effectively, you need personal data. I never said they sold that data, just that they need to collect it.

spokengent on Sept 21, 2011 [–]

They don't need to.

You search for X, they show adverts related to X.

The extra targeting stuff probably increases their revenue a few %.

icebraining on Sept 21, 2011 | [–]

That produces inferior results. But whether they need or not is irrelevant. They do.

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