The politician's use of "shared" to describe this is misleading in a way that HN headline-only readers are going to jump all over. What these sites were doing was abusing Google Analytics to store private user data in custom parameters. That is, in one example, if a user of a tax prep site said that they had 1 dependent, the site would set a parameter like "cd17:1" in their Analytics request. I don't really see how that amounts to Google's problem.
If a company uses or abuses software platforms to improperly store private user data, that is their error and not the fault of the platform. I assume you would not blame Google if Intuit put everyone's AGI in a Google Sheet.
If a company uses or abuses software platforms to improperly store private user data, that is their error and not the fault of the platform. I assume you would not blame Google if Intuit put everyone's AGI in a Google Sheet.