Google does not sell your personal information in any way. They use it for their own advertising purposes, but they don't sell it to anyone, in any form.
As squeaky clean as everyone in the valley believes Google to be, even most Googlers would be surprised with the type of work and contacts taken on by Google Federal (hint: it's not just Google Apps for the military). Here is a list of their current unclassified military contracts: https://www.fpds.gov/ezsearch/fpdsportal?indexName=awardfull...
If you're going to make a claim and drop a link on us, please tell us what's actually there to support your claim.
Most googlers who are also engineers can find out what most of these things are, and I would expect many are already aware of what those projects are likely to be. It is a core part of our culture that we share information openly within engineering, and don't leak it.
We can't tell you what's happening. That doesn't mean we don't know.
The NSA thing is disappointing and it's important that the electorate hold the government accountable, but democracy has not broken down yet, and the situation isn't quite as dire as, say, North Korea.
(Waiting for the "google employee compares US government to North Korea" headline, sigh...)
If you assume they're completely profit driven, it still makes sense for them to protect your data from other companies.
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.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2013/09/23/attveri...
There is a significant difference between the two.
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.
This includes potentially identifying information.
Google knows lots about me; people who buy adwords don't.
You can easily validate this by checking all the "pixels" (in the RTB sense) that are being deployed by Google. In their defense, they do mask a lot of things so stuff like the full IP address are not available (last time I worked on that they just give you the three first segments) but still quite a few information was available to target your demographic segment.
Edit:
For downvoters and people curious about tracking pixels: - https://support.google.com/dfp_premium/answer/1347585?hl=en - https://support.google.com/dfp_premium/answer/2508388?hl=en
Some people wouldn't distinguish those two.
