INFO 202 Fall 08 Blog

As I remarked in my comment to Annette’s post (above) on the Google Search Wiki, in order to personalize a search and persist it across time and location, an individual’s preference data must be stored by the search engine provider.  This data is used in ways we might not think about.  There was an article published on Friday (11/21/08) by MIT’s Technology Review site (http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/22202/) that discusses how Google will soon leverage its search interface features and IR data to offer targeted advertising services in the television arena (similar to its web-based counterpart, AdWords).  The new service will allow advertisers to search for shows based on audience demographics, spending habits, and potentially a number of other facets (who knows what data Google’s gathering about our search preferences).  It is important to recognize that our web search activities are often recorded and re-purposed to varying degrees.  I wonder how Search Wiki will later be used to further profile individuals and populations in profitable ways.  Is Google perhaps the world’s most powerful data broker?  The article concludes by summarizing the words of Google’s TV Ads product manager, Keval Desai, saying:

“A satellite-TV company called Echostar, working with credit-reporting company Equifax, will cross-reference shows watched (using its own data from set-top boxes) with income and buying habits (using Equifax’s data). This will let Google offer shows to advertisers that will reach, for example, people with household incomes greater than $100,000. Desai stresses that all this data is made anonymous, so it certainly won’t be possible to target specific households with ads.  I wonder how long we’ll have to wait for that.”