Starting off with an admission that I'm a Google fanboy and employee...
I hate this sentiment. It's silly. Google does not sell any information to anyone. Google just shows people targeted ads.
If you can show a way to infer personal details from the mere fact that someone is shown a particular ad (or particular huge set of ads), then publish your results so Google can figure out how to not leak that information.
There is only a subtle distinction between selling an information service like targeting and selling the underlying information.
Consider, a mobile phone network that sold drone strikes on its users using the privileged information they have on their location. The precise flow of money and information is not that important to the consequence for the end user.
Google targeting is "using information about me to benefit another company for financial gain of Google". It is not silly to call this selling...
Firstly, comparing ad views to drone strikes is absurd in any context, and the only purpose can be some terrible appeal to emotion. Even if we were to go with this analogy, the person purchasing the drone strike still doesn't have the privileged information. So, even in this absurd world, no information was sold. The fact that it's terrible for the user (almost as bad as seeing an ad on a site in exchange for that site costing no money!) is irrelevant.
Secondly,
> It is not silly to call this selling...
yes it is! When you sell X to someone, at the end of the transaction, they have X! Otherwise it's not selling!
Selling information, licences and services is different from physical goods but its still called selling. If you deliberately treat this too simplistically then yes, you won't be able empathise with people's discomfort with Google's business model. I'm sure you do actually appreciate how information services have this weird sort of transitivity.
The drone strike is not chosen for emotion but because it shares the targeting concept. If the mobile network didn't know your location, they cannot sell the service. If they do know your location they can. The difference between these two cases is the latter service includes, in some fashion, your location.
Is your location being sold to your enemy? You can argue the terminology but if you look at the consequences, your enemy has attacked you in your secret location because they bought something from the mobile network company.
When information, a license, or a service is sold, the buyer now has information, a license (or general right to do something), or has benefited from some service.
Google sells clicks on ads. Once a click is bought, the buyers now has eyeballs on their websites. Not the information about the person doing the clicking. So, the information about the person doing the clicking is not sold.
I'm going to have a last go because to work at google, I believe you have a moral imperative to understand why the analogy is apt.
Selling consequences of information in some very real sense includes the information. In your terms, the "benefit from some service", is a targeted ad which is a causal consequence of user information. A derived work if you like. Information isn't just one specific pattern of bits.
The drone analogy vividly demonstrates how selling a consequence, killing someone in a secret location, really does include their location as an intrinsic part of the service sold even if no-one actually hands out the lat/long.
If we want to make the analogy apt, it would be like the mobile service saying "To make a phone call, please first call the kill-yourself company and tell them where you are so they can kill you."
Google does not sell the information. It puts up ads that users may (or may not!) click on. The clicking is the point at which the information transfer occurs, and it is voluntary and transparent. Or as transparent as it can be, anyway - if you are unaware of how the internet works when you click on a link, that does not make Google culpable for presenting said link.
The information Google has about the user is never given to anyone, least of all the ad buyers.
