Totally. I don't think Google is necessarily doing anything as blatant as directly selling your browsing history to third parties.
Since I went to go check, I might as well share what I found: in my Google account "Activity controls" there is a toggle (off for me, not sure what the default is) that grants them permission to use Chrome history for "faster searches, better recommendations, and more personalized experiences". As I understand it, this is not selling away your data so much as letting them use it to auction your attention to advertisers.
Yeah exactly. Third parties can bid on keywords as they have always been able to do, and Google might give you better ads based on that data, but they aren't telling the third party why. That's a pretty big difference!
Since I went to go check, I might as well share what I found: in my Google account "Activity controls" there is a toggle (off for me, not sure what the default is) that grants them permission to use Chrome history for "faster searches, better recommendations, and more personalized experiences". As I understand it, this is not selling away your data so much as letting them use it to auction your attention to advertisers.