Since we're all dummies and you know the answers, please go ahead and explain how Google goes about selling heavily targeted ads to uniquely identifiable groups, but that they also are not "selling data".

Are we being massively pedantic and saying that it's not actual user data, but rather leveraging said data to sell ads to the anonymized targeted groups, who are actively tracked by Google around the internet so ads can be served up at opportune times in their browsing?

Because that dumb argument is like saying Oxford Dictionary doesn't sell words, they sell definitions; or that McDonalds doesn't sell beef, they sell hamburgers.