CNBC:

Last week, CEO Sundar Pichai wrote a New York Times op-ed that said “privacy cannot be a luxury good.” But behind the scenes, Google is still collecting a lot of personal information from the services you use, such as Gmail, and some of it can’t be easily deleted.

Here’s a link to the op-ed, which painted Google as the privacy protector for the masses and Apple as privacy for the elite.

The op-ed really rubbed me the wrong way, felt like hypocrisy of the worst kind. And this CNBC post does a nice job laying out exactly why.

Google says it doesn’t use your Gmail to show you ads and promises it “does not sell your personal information, which includes your Gmail and Google Account information,” and does “not share your personal information with advertisers, unless you have asked us to.”

But, for reasons that still aren’t clear, it’s pulling that information out of your Gmail and dumping it into a “Purchases” page most people don’t seem to know exists. Even if it’s not being used for ads, there’s no clear reason why Google would need to track years of purchases and make it hard to delete that information.

The article gets specific, showing purchases not made through Google that are tracked by Google and not easily deleted. How is this privacy for the masses?