I think as a child I got viruses from one of the ads, you know, the ones would put on the side of the site. We had to call in a guy, to clean parents’ computer. I felt really guilty and never touched those ads again.
So Google’s and Meta’s main business are ads. And recently I felt confused. Do people click on ads? Don’t these ads feel phishy to them?
Neither Google nor Meta sell data. The data is what makes the company valuable, so it doesn’t make sense for them to sell it (otherwise, competitors could just buy their data). They keep all the data for themselves, to improve their ad targeting algorithms.