the ol' "hashed minutae" and "in aggregate" chestnut. Meta at one point allowed you to target ads to a specific person (nevermind the cambridge analytica stuff.) Google is in the business of selling time, eyeballs, and mindshare to advertisers.
Google and meta (et al) receive money in exchange for the info of their user base. That they're playing 3 card monte (shell game?) with the data to "hide PII" - which has been mathematically proven to be impossible (currently, perhaps forever) seems a hair not worth splitting, considering their market caps.
Put simply, if there wasn't a financial reason to do the data collection google would simply not do it. You don't get rich shareholders by writing a lot of checks to seagate.
Google and meta (et al) receive money in exchange for the info of their user base. That they're playing 3 card monte (shell game?) with the data to "hide PII" - which has been mathematically proven to be impossible (currently, perhaps forever) seems a hair not worth splitting, considering their market caps.
Put simply, if there wasn't a financial reason to do the data collection google would simply not do it. You don't get rich shareholders by writing a lot of checks to seagate.