>"...just so happen to use websites to sell ads and consumer data." You mean exactly what Google and Facebook are? I think a lot of people tend to forget that

>"...just so happen to use websites to sell ads and consumer data." You mean exactly what Google and Facebook are? I think a lot of people tend to forget that Google is the most successful advertising and marketing company in the world. Facebook (if it is not already) Is the most successful engaging brand. Facebook, as a brand, has made it's actual brand the tool and platform for attracting the product, its users. The "selling of consumer data" is not so much that they sell out the data they have collected, but rather sell the access to the users. Ads have become interactive (Zynga) and the return to the consumer has become ethereal, ephemeral and trivial.