The Dirty Truth

Here is an interesting bit about the future of Google from FT.com.

Googleâ€™s ambition to maximise the personal information it holds on users is so great that the search engine envisages a day when it can tell people what jobs to take and how they might spend their days off.

That sounds a little scary in an Orwellian way.

Picture this; you have a day off coming up and, unlike most people who have a list of things a mile long that you have no chance of fulfilling, you don’t know what in the world to do. Don’t worry, your old pal Google knows your personal habits so well it can give some helpful suggestions.

Is Google going to tell you to do things that you would normally do like, get drunk and watch football on T.V., or, will it try to expand your horizons and suggest maybe, the Museum of Modern Art.

According to Eric Schmidt the chief executive at Google, they aren’t quite ready with the plan yet.

â€œWe cannot even answer the most basic questions because we donâ€™t know enough about you. That is the most important aspect of Googleâ€™s expansion.â€

They don’t know enough about you. They know what you search for and some of what you buy but they need more information. How are they going to do that? They want you to volunteer it with “optional personalization services”.

Several days ago, I wrote a post titled “18,000 Naked Mexicans” about Spencer Tunick’s mass photo shoot. Some people have typed things like “nude in public” into Google and ended up at this site. They were probably looking for something other than commentary on the artistic validity of Tunick’s work.

Google would like you to personalize the search engine experience so you don’t end up here when you really want something else.

So really, Google is just trying to be helpful, right? Of course not.

The race to accumulate the most comprehensive database of individual information has become the new battleground for search engines as it will allow the industry to offer far more personalised advertisements. These are the holy grail for the search industry, as such advertising would command higher rates.

It always goes back to money. It’s always about advertising. The advertising world is in a tizzy because they are not as able to force you to pay attention as they were in the past. So, the obvious solution, in their eyes, is to show you ads about things that interest you. “Personalized advertising”; and for that they need more information about you.

But here is the real deal; they aren’t going to wait for you to voluntarily give it. These “optional personalization services” are a bunch of jive. When people fill out surveys about themselves, they tend to paint a rosier picture than the reality. It’s human nature. It’s like when the Doctor asks me how much I smoke and I say, “about a pack a day”, when it’s really a pack and a half.

The advertising world doesn’t want the rosy, watered down version of you. They want the dirty truth. They will get it too.
Remember people that used to say: “There will come a day when we will all have chips implanted so “They” can track our every move.” Fact is, they don’t need to implant us with chips. We are all carrying around cell phones with GPS tracking, there are cameras everywhere, and all our internet activity is being recorded and stored.

You know what? Our Government already knows we are a bunch of slobs, our Government already knows how we act. The irony Mr. Orwell, is that “Big Brother” is an ad guy.