Google, through search, YouTube, and its advertising network, has rich data on user needs. It does not sell the data. However, it does, in effect, sell the predictions that the data generates to advertisers as part of a bundled service. If you advertise through Google’s network, your ad is shown to the users that the network predicts are most likely to be influenced by the ad. Advertising through Facebook or Microsoft yields similar results. Without direct access to the data, the advertiser buys the prediction.
