{"id":18,"date":"2007-04-16T19:25:25","date_gmt":"2007-04-17T03:25:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.smoblog.com\/google-likes-cookies\/"},"modified":"2007-04-17T17:28:23","modified_gmt":"2007-04-18T01:28:23","slug":"google-likes-cookies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.smoblog.com\/google-likes-cookies\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh my, how badly Google wants your cookies"},"content":{"rendered":"
I haven\u2019t had the time in the past couple days to really digest the attempted<\/a> acquisition of DoubleClick by Google<\/a>. Now it is sinking in. Google wants your cookies so that they can piece together as much of your browsing history as possible.<\/p>\n DoubleClick is the leading advertising company online, managing the display of advertising across many of the largest websites. <\/p>\n This complements Google\u2019s AdSense network because DoubleClick reaches into many major websites where AdSense doesn\u2019t exist. Google\u2019s total awareness of user behavior will grow significantly as soon as cookie database for both companies becomes cross-referenced.<\/p>\n As Rich Tehrani of TMCnet puts it<\/a>:<\/p>\n \nWith the acquisition of DoubleClick, Google now has access to the cookies and subsequently browsing history of vast numbers of web users. It would be fair to say that greater than 85% of Internet users frequently come into contact with ads served by DoubleClick. In addition there are a vast number of sites serving up Google\u2019s ads and running Google Analytics. Google perhaps now has access to the behavioral information of over 90% of web users.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Let\u2019s look at all the behavioral data Google will have: DoubleClick history, AdSense history, search history, Google Analytics, toolbar data, links sent via Gmail, Web clippings in Google Notebook, purchase data from Google Checkout. I\u2019m getting dizzy listing them all. Let\u2019s just say that it is a lot of data for the largest data-mining operation in mankind\u2019s history to chew on.<\/p>\n Yahoo has bet the farm that the massive stores of behavioral data that they have amassed are the critical resources that are going to give them an advantage over Google in the future. Yet if this acquisition goes through, Google has moved a lot closer to catching up.<\/p>\n Google is no doubt working feverishly to develop and patent algorithms that can make sense of all of this data and boil it down into subcontexts that can be used as criteria for rankings in Google search. The future of search is in analyzing social behavior and using predictive technology to ascertain what you are looking for. The deeper they can profile an individual, the easier they are to please (and make money off of via targeted advertising and product placements, of course).<\/p>\n When search algorithms have become completely enmeshed in behavioral metrics it will render this kind of stuff quaint and obsolete<\/a>.<\/p>\n What\u2019s the biggest threat to Google\u2019s stockpiles of data? You.<\/p>\nA big, big blow to Yahoo<\/h2>\n
The future of Search is in social behavior analysis<\/h2>\n
Can Google keep you from tossing your cookies?<\/h2>\n