Thursday, December 20, 2007

Should I be worried?

Google knows a lot about me. Let’s start with the copious daily searches for everything from analytics research to stocking stuffers. I use Googlemaps for driving directions to every new location that I visit. My personal blogs are created and maintained on Blogger. They’re tagged with Google Analytics. My iGoogle tab opens each time I launch a new browser with content specific to my interests. My inbox buzzes hourly with Google Alerts on companies that I track. I’ve watched dozens of videos on YouTube. Several years worth of personal emails were sent and received via Gmail to friends, family, colleagues, and every word is archived for easy retrieval.

Now that the FTC approved Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick, will my digital world become a bullseye for targeted advertising?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Is targeted advertising your only concern. I'm not exactly the most impressionable person when it comes to adds. In fact, I can safely say, I never really look at ads (I don't have a TV, so that's the majority of ads out the door), on print material I tend to skip right over it, and on the web, I use ad blocker, and have become rather savvy at spotting the words "ads by Google" in any text list. So I can say that becoming a bull’s-eye for ads is the least of my concerns. I'm more concerned with other implication of collecting my personal information.
I've even research (superficially) how to leave gmail, but they have in their EULA that they will kep your data anyways offline indefinately. Not cool.