Update: Mint’s website doesn’t actually seem to be using Adsense. It might be a mention that hasn’t been removed from the privacy policy.
The Linux Mint website uses google Adsense to sell your browsing data to google so they can better track your preferences and deliver personalized ads…
They state they do it for the money. Pretty scammy from my opinion. They should remove all the google things from their website (including analytics) and use their own solution instead.
Source: https://www.linuxmint.com/privacy.php
Google Adsense
Authorized third parties such as Google Adsense place cookies as described in our Cookies Policy. We use this information to serve you certain advertising content.
Advertising
We use Google Adsense to provide advertising and help fund our project.
On all websites using Adsense, including Linux Mint’s, Google use cookies to track your web activity and to guess what commercial products you’re most likely to be interested in. This information is then used by Adsense to provide personalized adverts to you.___
So, basically what every website uses? Google owns so much of web traffic that I personally don’t think this is really a issue unless you have a tinfoil hat.
Also, why would we hate that they need money? They are putting years of development into putting their vision into a Linux desktop which users can use for free.