As I said in another comment, you are seriously underestimating the size of the NYT. By many metrics, it's the largest global news organization based in the US and one of the largest in the world. Certainly larger than CBC, CNN, FNC, NBC News and about the same size of the BBC (and a bit smaller than Reuters and AP).
Their data collection helps them decide where to build new news bureaus and news rooms and also what content they should surface to their readers. I get a very California focused NYT vs my friends who live in NYC and London.
Also, I'm sure a chunk of their privacy policy is actually impacted by using Google as their ad service and a passthrough from Google's to them.
I'm not underestimating anything at all - how many news organizations have apps that run on Android? How many of them run Google ads? Google's privacy policy has to account for all of that. And all of that is a relatively small business compared to Google's cash cows. They are not at all comparable in terms of scale or diversity of services offered. Yet, in terms of privacy policy, they are quite comparable. Back when Google's business was at NYT's scale, its privacy policy was considerably shorter.
Their data collection helps them decide where to build new news bureaus and news rooms and also what content they should surface to their readers. I get a very California focused NYT vs my friends who live in NYC and London.
Also, I'm sure a chunk of their privacy policy is actually impacted by using Google as their ad service and a passthrough from Google's to them.