When I received the email from Google about their new interest based advertising that is due to roll out in April it caused me to question just what are they thinking.
I think it will be interesting to see how this actually works. It does seem like it will take relevancy away, yet they indicate it should make it as relevant as possible. This change from based on the current content to what your overall interest is based on surfing history could cause issues for some.
One thought came to mind, that is parental control. This could now allow parents to really discover what interest their children. Simply by going to a website that displays google ads and seeing what actually shows up.
It also means now that each family member will have to have a individual account on the family computer. Otherwise my guess is it would become so confused it would not know exactly what to display. Or the most dominant computer user in the home would set the preference for the ads everyone else views.
Google does give you ways to opt out of this tracking on their blog on the blog the also have talk about having a Ads preference manager, giving you control over what you see. This raised a red flag, this means that everyone would need a google account.
It was this same kind of web dominance that landed Microsoft in hot water years ago both in the U.S. and Europe. Yet if it can bring relevant ads to everyone, then everyone wins right?
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That was very surprising email by Google. At first it looks like very odd way to show ads but I think it would have a huge business. Normally we see ads related to content on a site but this sounds like very fishy to me. For me it means that Google is always monitoring that what I am seeing and what I like. Although It will increase the click through rate or something similar(I am not very expert at that) but may be it can invite hackers to think new ways to break into.