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If you give Google a cookie it will probably want to store your search behavior and given the scope of its publishing network….

Something tells me this story does not end happily.

Though this story has been developing for months, the New York Times article on Friday seems to have sparked a deeper look and the issue of privacy has come in to play.

And so it should at this stage. What really needs to be discussed is the establishing of what is allowed to be collected; how it is collected, stored and shared; what would be needed to opt in or out; and consequences of breaches of any limits set.

There seems to be a need to monitor what is being done and the extent our privacy can be invaded - since many times it is the fringe that uses technology to grab a little more than what we want.

The NYT article by Saul Hansell quotes Nick Fox, who - just so NYT knows for the future - is Senior Product Manager for Ads Quality. Nick will have a lot more to measure for Ads Quality if the traffic can be sorted in some quality manner.

As a marketer I would gladly use the information to improve my media buys. But then again we largely do with almost all other media and ours could be more accurate. I am sure the argument distills to Google would be providing the best connection possible between marketer and audience.

The synethesis of the “good user experience” with the “successful marketing effort” may be more than a cyberUtopia. But there are many who see this as the “belly of the beast”.

Given the beta launching of Ad Planner - which Google intends to give away free (guess another industry is in jeopardy) - the depth of knowledge available could be quite large. Marry the cookie with Ad Planner information and the knowledge of our online behavior is soon extensively recorded.

As the Wall Street Journal noted:

“Some ad executives say they are concerned that Google could use the data it compiles about their campaigns to make a business pitch to a competitor. They imagine a scenario in which the biggest online advertiser in a category is running its campaign through Google’s ad-serving systems. Not only would Google be helping that marketer deliver ads to particular Web sites; it would also be capturing data about which Web sites and types of ads work best. Advertising executives fear that Google could then resell that same intelligence to competitors. (Any data that marketers put into Google’s ad systems will remain confidential, a Google spokesman says.)”

Interestingly I have had a presentation from Microsoft that used aggregated industry info and five ‘not named’ competitors’ information. Nothing specific or against rules but enough that I would not want to share. And the advantage of the marketing pioneers is given away to late entries - so why do the exploration, just wait for the report.

Steve Baldwin of Did-It made an interesting comment during OMMA Behavioral 3.0:

“Whenever I read something about Behavioral Targeting, I am reminded of the classic television show, “The Prisoner,” in which the doomed protagonist #6 repeats that he is “not a number, but a free man!” Today, #6 would be protesting (in vain) that he is:

“not a target”
“not a set of behaviors”
“not a source of data”
“not a click”

Of course, no amount of protesting matters because there’s so much money to be made in BT.”

Though there is, as Zachary Rodgers at ClickZ notes, “a loose coalition of Internet watchdogs that have bent their will toward fighting this new breed of comprehensive behavioral targeting.”

Interesting that he was talking about recent legal problems with NebuAd and their attempts to gather behavioral information using ISPs and other access providers. When you have the internet user information available to Google the reach is even greater.

Nick Fox told NYT “Google’s approach was different from what Yahoo, AOL and others call behavioral targeting. Those companies look at what a user did a few days earlier to show them ads about the same topic today. Google says it believes that search engine advertising is most effective if it relates to what the user has most recently searched for.”

But then Larry Page has already told Reuters: “On the more exciting front, you can imagine your brain being augmented by Google. For example you think about something and your cell phone could whisper the answer into your ear.”

Danny Sullivan openly admits he had the implant.

Google has the technology and wants to use it. In the mobile space it is being offered to jump start advertisers apparently. Democratic Media’s Digital Destiny reported:”Google has made presentations to advertisers about its mobile marketing capabilities. It appears that mobile cookies are part of their targeting marketing plan. Google told advertisers that “Google provides mobile conversion tracking on phones that support cookies. Google can measure clicks, impressions and conversions for all campaigns.”

How all this plays out will change the way many things are done. Being aware of the various directions at least has you thinking. Add to the opinions at the forum.

Yesterday, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt was interviewed by Ken Auletta on stage at a San Francisco event hosed by Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications. Schmidt offered up insight on a variety of issues. Let’s dig in.

Yahoo

An independent Yahoo would be better for innovation and competition, in Schmidt’s opinion. He feels that Microsoft has delivered products such as Windows that limits the choice of consumers.

Newspapers

Schmidt said that Google has a ‘moral imperative’ to help newspapers, who’ve lost money in recent years to online publishers, who often provide their content for free. DoubleClick will be a part of the effort, though specific details were not revealed.

Of course, newspapers haven’t traditionally been Google’s biggest fan. A Belgian newspaper group has been going after Google for years for indexing their site.

‘Don’t be Evil’

The famous mantra is misunderstood, says Schmidt. Instead, the phrase was designed to facilitate internal conversations about corporate ethics, but most people interpret it as an absolute moral stance.

iPhone

Schmidt said that a “vast majority of searches” performed on Google via mobile phones are generated on iPhones. But since Google is preparing its own mobile platform, Schmidt has been excused from Apple board meetings a couple of times. He said that Android will “likely be quite different” from the iPhone.

via InfoWorld, USA Today, Reuters, and MarketWatch

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Google had a tough Leap Year week: GOOG stock price nosedived, $15 billion in value evaporated and the Melissa Mayer San Fran mag headline wiped off the Web and replaced by the “Adventures of Marissa.”

The gist of the story? The Power and The Glam not The Glory.

Then this weekend, CNET News whacked Google CEO Eric Schmidt in public.

CNET News reporter Elinor Mills apparently felt scorned. After flying cross-country to see Eric Schmidt’s Google Health presentation and scheduling a 1:1 interview, Mills found him unwilling to answer questions - questions, that is, unrelated to Google Health (i.e. Microsoft-Yahoo merger, comScore report, Microsoft Health Vault).

So Mills vented her fury in public.

On her blog she wrote: “Give and take with the press is part of being in a position of responsibility at a highly visible public company. (Schmidt) saying everything but the topic at hand is off limits is, well, lame.”

Google CEO Eric Schmidt lame? Judge for yourself in Frank Watson’s post, “No Brokeback with Google Health” where he embedded Eric Schmidt’s Google Health launch video.

Mills had tried a self-described “last-ditch, I-gotta-get-something-good-or-my-editor-is-going-to-kill-me question.” She noted that she squeezed in a question about Microsoft’s HealthVault and how it differs from Google Health. She reported Schmidt got up from his chair, and said, “That’s it.”

Mills’s editor also called into question Google stonewalling CNET News:

“He certainly has the right to refuse to take questions, but it’s unclear what led him to stonewall. Schmidt doesn’t seem like a CEO who is afraid to go toe to toe with the press. Perhaps he wanted to make sure the message got out on Google Health, but Elinor had already heard all the details at the Orlando presentation and press conference.”

To date her editor has not (as the scorned Mills feared) killed her.

The wisdom of the crowd? Journalist, heal thyself.

Google had a tough Leap Year week: GOOG stock price nosedived, $15 billion in value evaporated and the Melissa Mayer San Fran mag headline wiped off the Web and replaced by the “Adventures of Marissa.”

The gist of the story? The Power and The Glam not The Glory.

Then this weekend, CNET News whacked Google CEO Eric Schmidt in public.

CNET News reporter Elinor Mills apparently felt scorned. After flying cross-country to see Eric Schmidt’s Google Health presentation and scheduling a 1:1 interview, Mills found him unwilling to answer questions - questions, that is, unrelated to Google Health (i.e. Microsoft-Yahoo merger, comScore report, Microsoft Health Vault).

So Mills vented her fury in public.

On her blog she wrote: “Give and take with the press is part of being in a position of responsibility at a highly visible public company. (Schmidt) saying everything but the topic at hand is off limits is, well, lame.”

Google CEO Eric Schmidt lame? Judge for yourself in Frank Watson’s post, “No Brokeback with Google Health” where he embedded Eric Schmidt’s Google Health launch video.

Mills had tried a self-described “last-ditch, I-gotta-get-something-good-or-my-editor-is-going-to-kill-me question.” She noted that she squeezed in a question about Microsoft’s HealthVault and how it differs from Google Health. She reported Schmidt got up from his chair, and said, “That’s it.”

Mills’s editor also called into question Google stonewalling CNET News:

“He certainly has the right to refuse to take questions, but it’s unclear what led him to stonewall. Schmidt doesn’t seem like a CEO who is afraid to go toe to toe with the press. Perhaps he wanted to make sure the message got out on Google Health, but Elinor had already heard all the details at the Orlando presentation and press conference.”

To date her editor has not (as the scorned Mills feared) killed her.

The wisdom of the crowd? Journalist, heal thyself.

Want a snapshot of the day’s search marketing news? Here we’ve collected today’s top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:
From the SEW Blog:

Yahoo CEO Says They Want To Become Internet’s Indispensable Starting PointJerry Wang outlined his vision of Yahoo’s future as the “internet’s indispensable [...]

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Beware of hidden clauses [...]

The Chinese government will restrict all video and audio content on sites starting next month, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
“From next month, only state websites will be allowed to carry film or radio programs, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) said,” they reported.
In an effort to control video sharing programs, the government [...]

Facebook applications can be bad enough when they’re upfront about their identities; getting tricked into installing them is the last thing (aside from various privacy violations) that any user needs.  So Facebook is addressing this problem with some new restrictions on developers.
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Rogers Internet in Canada provides its subscribers with an advisory when they are approaching their account’s bandwidth limits, by injecting that notice into a web page they are viewing.The example of Rogers dropping a notice onto Google’s homepage began making the rounds yesterday. Some people called it a threat to net neutrality, which seems a [...]