Google announced with great fanfare that they’re going to stop selling ads based on individuals and instead will group users into cohorts for ad targeting. That’s great! Or is it?

It’s important to remember that Google, Facebook, Twitter, and their friends are not technology companies. They’re advertising companies. They’re no different from a billboard company: they make almost all of their money from selling ads.

Apple made waves last summer when they announced that personalized ads would be opt-in with a soon-to-be released version of iOS (14.5 is due out in the next few weeks). Facebook embarked on a major PR campaign to say this would hurt small businesses. The truth, as even Facebook employees admit, is that the change will hurt Facebook.

Why all of this talk? Why now? Privacy is becoming the civil rights issue of the decade. Companies that we’ve never heard of scrape together our web habits, build out profiles and assumptions about us, and package that digital dossier for sale. Businesses buy that data, and reporting suggests, so are agencies of the United States government.

Most news articles state that some people like personalized ads. The idea is that these people like learning about relevant new products and services. In theory, perhaps yes, people like that do exist. The problem is how the data is gathered (without your consent), brokered (without you in the deal) and disseminated (to people you do not know).

Imagine someone following you around everywhere you go. At each stop, they take notes about what you did, who you spoke to, what you looked at, how long you lingered, and so on. If someone did this in the real world, they’d be charged with stalking. It happens in the digital world to all of us, every minute of every day.

Apple is doing something about it, great! Google, too! Well, as with all things Google, not really. They’re going to change the way they let third-party sites and apps track you. On their sites, they’re going to gobble you up. And it’s not just the search engine, it’s any web property that they own, like YouTube, Gmail, or Maps. Does this make you want to quit using your Fitbit yet?

The way that ads are served over the web may be changing, but it’s as important as always to analyze bias. Google, Facebook, and Twitter lose money unless they sell ads. They’re not going to let you go willingly.