Revenue: 256 billion dollars. So "hundreds of millions" is .1% of their spending. And it is a line item that can be effortly axed in hard times. As others sai

Revenue: 256 billion dollars. So "hundreds of millions" is .1% of their spending. And it is a line item that can be effortly axed in hard times. As others said, it's basically marketing. If you have a company that actively consumes your personal information, but it's a rapacious creepy fascist company, people aren't going to hand over their data to it. Even if you hate the "woke", you probably still trust a company with a bunch of sensitive, moralistic raving SJWs that will scream if Google is abusing things too much. Which has happened! Likely, worth every penny.