Thursday, February 7, 2008

smart > invasive

"This country doesn't permit the phone company to listen to what you say and use that information to target ads. The computer industry doesn't permit a software company to record everything we type and use that information to target ads," he said. "Yet with this merger, Google seeks to record nearly everything you see and do on the Internet and use that information to target ads." (all quotes from forbes)

Woah, woah woah... wait a minute here! This could be a GREAT thing! Listening to private conversations on the phone is not a fair comparison to information posted on the web. Even in emails, I don't think that targeted advertising for the content of that conversation is unjust in any way. I personally would much rather an advertisement targeted to my interests than a random one that I don't care about. That is SMART, not invasive.
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1 comment:

Katie K said...

hmmmmm well i think this would be smart rather than invasive if the users knew that their sidebar ads were targeted towards them based on the content of their searches/emails etc. instead of just blindly seeing ads and going "oh hey i need that!" and i'm not quite sure why that's different in my brain..but it is somehow. maybe its a transparency in business issue.

also..hi!

February 10, 2008 at 12:44 PM

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