I agree with your sentiment that there is no absolute here; however there is a difference if the whole machine is a blackbox or just the CPU and is sold by a li

I agree with your sentiment that there is no absolute here; however there is a difference if the whole machine is a blackbox or just the CPU and is sold by a listed corporation that is only accountable to their shareholders. They see privacy as a marketing advantage, however they collect data as they see fit. It is also important to note, that they are indeed in the ad business and even if it is no match to their hardware business they are profit maximizing. So even if they don't sell your data now this can change and your record on that big corp will become known to whoever pays enough. Side question: Does Google directly sell personal data to advertisers? (For Google applies what I said above anyway)