Last week, The New York Times covered a new project by Google: having targeted, text-based advertisements that are influenced by past user search history. With this new program, a user who makes separate searches for “golf” and “shoes” is more likely to see ads for golf shoes during subsequent searches – reminiscent of how Amazon recommends products based on past searches and purchases.

Google, already owning two-thirds of the search market, has an advertising relationship with many businesses. These businesses only pay Google when their ads get clicked. So far the system has been beneficial and lucrative for both Google and their advertisers. By integrating past search data with current contextual advertisements, Google is greatly
expanding the context within which they can display ads. Google can therefore improve the relevance of ads, increasing the chance that users will click them.

If this model is successful, users become more than one-time search results; they could develop robust profiles of interests to allow very specific, tailored selection of advertisements. But does such a collection of user-interest data pose privacy concerns?

The argument in favor of new advertising approaches like this is that this data can be used to display advertisements that, far from being annoying or distracting, actually offer useful solutions and products to consumers at exactly the right time in exactly the right place.  Personally, I don’t even notice a lot of ads on websites that I view just because I’m so used to seeing ads for products that don’t interest me at all.  I’ve grown immune to ads but if they are going to be tailored to my interests, I may actually start noticing and clicking these ads now.

Is Google the right company to implement this? Already, people seem very quick to trust Google, but it seems to me that there should be limits on how much information any one company can have about their users, and those limits should be set by the users themselves.  I get the feeling that many users just don’t comprehend or realize how much information of theirs can be tracked via programs like these.

What level of transparency are you prepared to offer up to Google?