Google’s Erik Schmidt has recently made some comments that have recently gotten a load of tongues wagging, but really is anyone surprised?
I have often thought that development within Google has been aimed precisely at gathering as much info about individuals as possible. I would imagine that the evolution was something like this:
Hey, we have all of these people that we are showing advertisements to, wouldn’t it be cool if we could individually identify them. Setting a cookie won’t work, because that can turn off cookies or use different systems. Let’s get them to login by requiring a login to enable certain parts of search. Check. Now we can associate everything that they search for with an identity.
Hmm, not that many people are finding that compelling enough to login to Google. Let’s do what Yahoo did and offer them email. We’ll use the gimmick of providing loads of storage, more than anyone else is currently offering to encourage them to dump as much of their email in there as possible. As a cool side effect, we now have access to all of their email contacts and can scan, parse and dissect their email contents as well. And now that they are using mail, they will tend to stay logged into Google all the time, so we can track searches, etc more consistently.
Great now let’s see if we can find out what they like to do. Yeah, we’ll give ’em a calendar so that we can track their activities, too. And look, we now get access to more contact information. Let’s provide notifications of events via SMS, now we have their mobile phone numbers, too. Maps will help us know what kinds of places they like to shop, visit or hangout at. Good, good, good.
Let’s not stop there, because we really want to know more private/confidential information that they have. That Writely thing looks pretty interesting, let’s buy that and Google brand it along with a spreadsheet. Now we can scan, parse and mine their resumes, budgets and whatever other highly personal stuff they are willing (or stupid enough) to put in our online offerings.
As so it goes with the youtube and feedburner acquisitions (what do they like to watch?, what feeds do they read). It would not surprise me if at some point in the future that they acquire Joost to get even more targeted information on viewing habits as well as another easy avenue for advertising.
It sort of reminds me of the short essay Brian Eno wrote in A Year With Swollen Appendixes that was a sort of futuristic look at the lengths that advertisers would go to try to personalize their message. The tactics used, included customizing radio broadcasts, news reports and even people to try to entice a buy or garner attention for a message.
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