They make money from personal info but not necessarily in a way that would automatically be considered a violation of privacy.<p>The best way I can think of it is to compare to cable TV.  Insert some other service if you&#x27;ve never had or wanted cable TV.  Right now I pay something like $40&#x2F;mo for cable TV and still have to watch something like 15-18 minutes of advertising per hour of programming.<p>The &quot;Google version&quot; of cable TV would either be free or cost a nominal $5&#x2F;mo subscription and their algorithm would automatically use my viewing history to determine which ads might be applicable to me.  As a result, I&#x27;d only have to watch a single 5 minute ad segment in the middle of every hour-long program.  The better odds of a given ad being applicable would make the ad time more valuable so they wouldn&#x27;t need to run as many to make the same amount of profit.  Likewise, people and companies that want to reach potential customers waste less of their advertising and publicity budget on viewers that would never buy their products.<p>So, gross oversimplification aside, there&#x27;s &quot;making money from personal info&quot; and there&#x27;s &quot;using data to make the same money from less advertising than traditional methods&quot;.  I&#x27;m sort of on the fence myself and somewhat playing devil&#x27;s advocate here but it&#x27;s something that&#x27;s often lost in discussions.<p>My main concerns are that government, law enforcement, or criminals would gain access to data that I only agreed to share with one company&#x27;s algorithms.  My main point is that &quot;making money from personal data&quot; can sound a lot like &quot;selling my personal info to god knows who&quot; which I&#x27;ve never known to be the case regarding Google or any of the info that&#x27;s collected by Microsoft in newer versions of Windows.<p>My main conflict is between two things:  a reflexive distrust of the motives of business and an acknowledgement that some really cool things (and plenty of mundane but still good things) only work when you have the data to power them.  It&#x27;s definitely a complex issue and not something I&#x27;ll solve in an overly-long comment while I waste the last 10 minutes before it&#x27;s time to go home.