Another detailed study, by Luigi Vigneri and his colleagues at EURECOM in 2015, looked closely at the 5,000 newest and most popular applications in the Google Play store. Researchers found that 500 of these apps connect to more than 500 distinct URLs, and 25 connect to more than 1,000 URLs. Multiple URLs can connect to the same “domain.” So the researchers also examined the domains that were most often the source of these connections. Nine of the top twenty domains behind these hidden connections are web services run by Google. Of the remaining eleven, three are owned or affiliated with Google. The other eight are Google competitors in behavioral futures markets, including Facebook, Samsung, and Scorecard Research, a data broker that sells surplus behavior to its customers.

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 2013