Comment by torrent-of-ions

The "pay for click" is how they sell their product to advertisers. But advertisers do not pay for clicks. A click is worthless. They pay because they know that their adverts are being shown to the right people and there's a guarantee there in the "pay for click" thing. In order for Google to actually get those clicks, it must show them to the right people, and it does that by targeting.

Google sells targeted advertising, not clicks. Nobody pays for clicks. I do not think advertisers are buying raw data. I think they are buying advertising which is targeted based on that raw data.