Google Uses Your Search History to Serve You Ads?! Au Revoir PRIVACY!!!!

Yeah, there are actually a ton of firms that do this! Keep an eye out I bet you will start to notice it more and more. It is called targeting, basically they look right into your cache and find what you have been searching for and you are served an ad that is related. Places like Tacoda and MediaForge do this, it's not just google!

add a new like on facebook and watch the ads change. The ads that are served are very targeted...
Bad for consumers but great for advertisers...

You can turn that (google recording your searches and web history) off in Google webmaster tools I think. So Google don't track your web history.

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With every child and his mother on Facebook and loving it. With Facebook requiring "real names" even for Egyptian pro-democracy activists. With spammers and stalkers nonetheless able to maintain numerous Facebook aliases. With some employers starting to REQUIRE a Facebook activity history so they "know who you are." With a British tabloid able to hack your text messages. You are concerned about a little cookie activity tracking??

#1. No private citizen should post their real name or clear photo on the internet, especially children. Gmail does not require real names but verifies uniqueness through automated telephone confirmation. That's what Facebook should do. Facebook wants the ability to search real names to "find friends." It can still do this without revealing the alias. Reply: "We may have a membership for this person. Here are potential matches. Check those that may be the person you seek. We then will notify these people and enable them to view YOUR facebook page without leaving notice of their alias. It will be up to them to enable you to know their alias."

#2. Privacy and democracy were doomed the day the stock market was invented. Microsoft began with a young geek taking notes at hippie-inspired conventions based on free sharing. Then became the most powerful monopoly in history. The Yahoo directory began as a cult popularist phenomenon. Then after they figured they had a lock on the market, they decided to charge hundreds of dollars just to "apply" for their directory. Ironically Google was invented about the same time, making Yahoo obsolete. Then Google went public. A so-called public corporation is legally required to suck millions of dollars out of consumers and give it to shareholders whose business is to play poker trying to rip off each other with the share prices. Why are you surprised what's happening?

The amazing thing is that with the right non-public business model, the combined brains in this one discussion thread could put Google and Facebook out to pasture, to the same degree that they have put Yahoo and Myspace out to pasture. The next step would be not to occupy Wall Street, but to pasteurize Wall Street.

I am working on such a non-public business model. My idea is not like "OS" or "cooperative" or "nonprofit." My idea makes it more possible for innovaters to make milions of dollars and to out-compete huge corporations. The only downside is that your profits are limited to a few tens of millions, not billions. Also I am a slow worker and all my friends and relatives can barely send emails. So send me a message anyone, if you might like to work with me on this. Otherwise, I am making progress, and you can expect to hear more about this within 6 months. Or just keep an eye on Emocracy.com and Emocracy.org. (Not yet online. And when it is online, the new nature of the business model might not be apparent for several years. Unless I can team up with someone who can move things along.)

Meanwhile, I expect you all to keep thinking about what advanced applications you can develop to get a jump on Facebook and Google. And what price you would like to get for it. Let's start the 60's all over again, but this time do it right. Power to the people.

P.S. The stock market is a powerful system to enable development. But the same development can be enabled through bonds, without ripping people off, without resulting in billionaires systematically taking the lion's share of all economic development, without destroying the middle class and without resulting in a roller-coaster economy. And my idea uses a third system, different from both stocks and bonds.

Thank you TheGame. Interesting to hear your opinion. You are on my CEO list. Everyone here is on my list. Please understand, I was sort of exaggerating and pep talking, like we used to do in the 70's. I don't really know where my ideas will lead. Also I don't want to drag anyone else into my huge time consumption. But as soon as I have some traffic and income going, I will let you all know.

By the way, TheGame's reference reminds me to mention, intermittently I think of writing an article called, "Is Facebook the New Asbestos?"

Asbestos was once heralded as one of the greatest advancements in technology. Fireproof. Rotproof. Insulating. Then it turned out to be one of the greatest disasters in history.

Similarly, we barely know what is the affects of children being brought up watching television. Before we had time to assess this, the computer was invented. Then the internet. Now video games and Facebook.

In the early twentieth century, some so-called "scientists" decided the perfect upbringing for a child might be to be raised as if in a plastic bubble. You can imagine the results. How much different to be raised on computer games? During the Vietnam war, the army decided they would overcome the high rate of non-shooting by having soldiers shoot pop-up targets shaped like people. This resulted in a much higher rate of combat response but also of mental disorders. How much different to be raised on computer games? When adolescent elephants were raised on reserves without adult males, they often went out of control, murdering rhinoceri and each other. All of these things are systematically happening to a huge percentage of children today. And as they grow older, it's on to eharmony and internet dating, perhaps with scant idea of how to feel another person's personality or even to know their own personality.

Our culture has a black-and-white perfectionist attitude. This was one thing made worse in the 60's. Pop culture was idealized, and everyone who was not hip was a square. The typical attitudes were variations of: we who drive a VW and smoke pot are 100% innocent vs. everyone else is 100% guilty. Similarly, because we are involved with computers, we are expected to be uncritical and defensive about every aspect of computers. It should be the opposite. Just as firemen are the most aware of the dangers of fire, those of us most involved with computerization should be the most aware and the most ready to promote awareness of the dangers and unknowns.

Believe it or not, I have that beat. I own Popocracy.com. It was on my 'wish list' back when Enom enabled free expired domain checking. That was the one worthwhile domain it got me, and I could hardly believe my luck. My idea was a sort of DMOZ but much more efficient. Still might have this as a sister site for Emocracy.

Then after the Arab Spring movement, I decided to give priority to Emocracy. And to use .ORG to emphasize we are not out to soak people. Strangely, I owned Emocracy.COM, but Emocracy.ORG was owned by the recently deceased idealistic founder of Earthrise Spirulina, and not set to expire for another year. But somehow it became available.

Here are some other domains I own, you might find amusing.

Hamtrak.com / Hamtrack.com
Original concept: hamster-powered search engine
(Human edited Google results of top 100 search phrases.
Animated logo of a hamster in a wheel.)
Current concept: celebrity blogs.

BeatingCasinos.com
(From my card counting days.)

CoffeeRepublican.com/org
Blogging community.
The theme...
Once upon a time, British colonists were angry over British tea taxes.
Some British colonists dressed up as Indians and attacked tea shipments.
This was called the "Tea Party."
Others drank coffee and became Americans.
Since then, British drink tea, Americans drink coffee.
Democrats represent the working people and should be respected.
The Tea Party represents genuine concerns and should be respected.
However in the final analysis...
The nature of Democrats is to expect the government to solve their problems.
The nature of the Tea Party is to expect the government to solve their problems.
The nature of Coffee Republicans is to strive for success under any condition,
and to respect and compromise with the needs of those less motivated,
but ultimately to represent the long term national interest.
Or as a Democrat once said,
"Ask not what your country can do for you.
Ask what you can do for your country."

I'm glad you like yours because I like mine and would not want Steve Mosely wanting it haha. After one of us gets one going, the other can get the other going, and we can experiment with collaborative linking strategies. (Hmm this somehow reminds me of my playground conversations back in kindergarten.)

If someone wants to work with popocracy, either on their own or together, I am open to any arrangement. Actually, another back-burner is activating 200 Wordpress-MS sub-blogs for my fallow speculation and protective domains. My own domain parking with full blogs, SEO directories, and "maybe for sale" reference to my own version of Aftermic: 1000dollardomains.com. (Free listings for everyone with fallow domains. With some secret promotional ideas. No 20% commissions. Just small voluntary donations if this helps you to sell.) If any well-known member of this discussion wants me to site-enable their fallow domains, or to take temporary personal control of any of my blogs and SEO directories, I can probably arrange it for free, in exchange for occasional technical tips such as I already receive here.

Actually, I envision something similar to GoodGiftBadGift.com. Except I only do the good gifts and each Amazon product review is on a separate domain and the domain is also for sale. And it's more than a domain it's a Google-ranked site.

Otherwise, if nobody draws me into another direction, I've decided to focus first on Emocracy. (As soon as I finish Vermocracy and PlanetaryInvesting. And Florence-and-Italy that I promised 5 years ago for some Italian friends. And do my laundry. Aaargh.)

This got a bit off topic...

But yeah, google saves your search history to provide more accurate ads. That's nothing they are trying to hide.
Try and write a program that searches for cats on your computer like 100 times. Then suddenly all sites on the web are advertising cats for you to buy!

Login to web history and turn it off. Can be hard to find which I think they have done on purpose

Whenever I do evil SEO stuff in Chrome and I want to stop the Google Black Helicopters, I use Control + Shift + Delete to delete history and then Control + Shift + n to switch to incognito browsing.

On the other side of the coin... if you have an adsense account, it means the automated ads that appear on your site/s are more relevant to the user and more likely to get clicks and earn you revenue