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| Sleepy Jimmy in the Early Morning Sun |
Yesterday I shared some thought about some of the complications of shopping locally. I briefly mentioned shopping on line, and given Google’s recent “integration” of its information collection about us, I want to add some thoughts about how we sell ourselves on the Internet.
Back in the unimaginable past, when there was no World Wide Web, I read some pretty hot emails about the commercial future of the Internet. The linking of computers around the world along “backbones” that intersected at “nodes” was the creation of the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency. DARPA not only ran the Internet, it paid for it. Those of us who used it did pay hosting companies, but the actual Internet was free. It was like paying for a bus ticket on the government-built Interstate Highway system.
Many people were outraged at the prospect of the commercialization of the Internet; they predicted all kids of ads, foolishness, trickery, a degrading of taste and tone, and the domination of the entire enterprise by huge corporate interests.
Luckily, there was nothing to worry about from those predictions, right?
The invention of the Web increased the usefulness of the Internet, bringing it from nerdy obscurity into the mainstream. Everything that had been feared came to pass, if not much more and much worse. Once DARPA ended its funding, there was little choice.
I’ve come to think that the commercialization of the Internet has its good side too. It enables people with specialized services and products to reach just the people who might be interested. And conversely it enables a person like me to find what I need – handmade Obama pins, obscure books, weird spices……..
The Internet companies are able to charge advertisers by selling two basic things: the quantity of the viewers, and the quality. It is on the latter point that we run into issues of privacy. Data miners can infer a great deal about me if they know basic demographic info about me, plus what web sites I visit and what I talk about in postings and what I order from Amazon.
So the sellers are zealous about collecting information about us, to refine what they are selling to ad buyers. This is no different from TV – the audience for Rachel Maddow’s show and the one that follows it – “Locked Up: Raw” are probably not the same, and the ads will reflect that difference.
If you watch TV and movies on Hulu, you’re used to being nagged with the question, “Is this ad relevant to you?” Hulu wants you to see this query as a favor to you – just tell them which ads you prefer, and you’ll get to see the ads that you like. Or hate less. It reminds me of being offered different flavors of lollipops when I was a kid, after gruesome visits the dentist (a dentist giving out lollipops? It was the 1950’s – and I bet that cavity creator/filler died a rich man).
What Hulu is really up to here is using you to increase its income, because it can charge more to advertisers when it can show them a demographic consisting of people who are more interested in that product.
Somehow Hulu’s question feels duplicitous to me, and I never answer it – hitting “mute” and reading email is my choice during commercials.
This brings me to the new integration of Google’s data collection across its various services. What is irking is the use of my search questions to target me for ads. Like Hulu, it feels over the line of the commercial deal I thought I had with Google: that they would provide me with certain services, in exchange for me being exposed to the ads that were put in front of me.
Now, if I have a funny ache late and night and start Googling odd and embarrassing diseases, Google can push that information over to any one of dozens of social networking, communicating, imaging, selling or mapping services. Then the next day I’ll be with one of my kids when they want to show me a video on YouTube, and the ads will pop up: Stop Venereal Disease In Its Tracks! Or maybe, Remove Unwanted Hair! Or – trust me – worse.
I think my “deal” with Google – enshrined in its Terms of Service, isn’t unlimited. I’ll endure the ads, but I want to draw the line. Google, not exactly a starving little startup, can still make itself fabulously wealthy without broadcasting my private research questions - the commodification of my anxiety.
In Google and Hulu and wherever you can, you can go into the “Settings” function and try to limit how information about you is collected and used. I don’t like handouts and I love the diversity of the Internet, so I'm not asking that all commercialism be banned. But for me, search information – already used to display ads on the Google search page – shouldn’t travel elsewhere. For me, what happens in Google Search stays in Google Search.
If you have a Google email account (Gmail), you can deal with this issue. First make sure you’re logged into your Gmail account. Then, go to www.google.com/history. If you press the “no thanks” button, evidently Google will delete your past search history and won’t spread searches around in the future. This may protect a bit of your privacy, and if enough people opt out, weaken the zeal of companies like Google to overreach in their personal data collection.
