At 8:38 am -0700 7/8/04, Brad Beyenhof wrote:
> On Thursday, Jul 8, 2004, at 01:49 America/Vancouver, Dennis W. Manasco > wrote: > > > Isn't anyone else concerned about the privacy violation implicit in > > letting google's robots paw through a gigabyte of their mail, > > everything from list subscriptions to personal mail to order receipts, > > in order to 'categorize the user' for google's advertisers?
It doesn't "categorize the user." It's on a message-by-message basis, and ads only pertain to what is currently on the screen... not some conspiratorial "user profile" they're making behind your back.
> > The idea of some advertiser-driven company analyzing all of that> information about my interests and contacts makes me feel absolutely > creepy.
Again, they don't analyze it in bulk. They just target ads to the message currently shown on the screen, like the Google Ads that you see all over the Web.
Brad,
I'm sorry, but I just can't believe that they don't aggregate the user's information and categorize the individual across a large personal-interest matrix.
I acknowledge that the ads appearing with an individual message are almost certainly dictated primarily by the content of that message. To do otherwise would be antithetical to basic marketing principles: The mark is interested in (in this case reading about) some subject. Try to sell him something that relates to that interest.
However, the only conceivable purpose in allowing such a huge amount of storage for each user is to better improve the granularity of the message response. (1GB times how many million potential subscribers?) That's basic customer analysis: e.g. The mark is reading about sports. Does he like baseball, but deletes all messages about soccer? What about football? Is he a little league coach? Does he buy his team's equipment? Is he into sports betting? Is his wife a tennis nut with an upcoming birthday?
If I were running the show I would be analyzing that whole GB of storage to better "categorize" my ad targets. I would also have analyzed all of the targets' deleted mail to better fill out the individualized profiles. To do anything else would be a stupid waste of valuable data and, whatever else I think about google, I would never accuse them of being stupid when it comes to marketing and advertising.
It would truly shock me if google's business plan, as presented to their potential advertisers and financiers, did not include the promise of extremely fine-grain message-derived analysis of their subscribers. To do otherwise would risk having all but the most inept marketeers walking away from the table shaking their heads and pocketing their checkbooks (and the investment bankers screaming bloody murder).
Best wishes,
-=-Dennis
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