[1]: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/13/google_payment_coming_soon/
Do you have any idea what Google could end up knowing about us?
They offer free web searching, free email, free calendars, free spreadsheets, free word processing, free mapping… and we use them! A lot! And soon, Google Payments.
So what does Google get for this? Ad revenues, to be sure. But what they really get is information. They can know what you email about, when you’ve got plans, where they are, if you know how to get there, and soon what you spend money on. This plus whatever they glean about you by scrounging the web in general.
I dunno… no news here, I guess… just strikes me as awesome, kinda in the old fashioned scary sense.
This is part of why I don’t care to sign-up for Google’s services. Yes, they are very well-engineered and function beautifully, but I don’t trust what they’re going to do with the information.
Google’s revenue is selling ads. They’re doing so by being able to target demographics in a very granular level, and they’re able to target so precisely becaues of the information you give when you use their web services.
Give me my own domain, or even pay-per-user .Mac (they really need to go to a monthly fee, just conceptually). I don’t like free-subsidized-by-advertising.
The one that’s getting my attention right now is Google Notebook, which is just a perfect, I-can’t-believe-it-wasn’t-done-ten-years-ago idea. But again, imagine what They could know about you if your to-do lists, birthday lists, wedding plans, etc. were in there! Talk about a focused advertising opportunity!
When I was with a former company, we had folks coming in and registering their exact locations and what things they wanted to know about the weather for in those areas. In a conference call with a major internet ad serving company, they were stunned at the quality, detailed, customer-offered information we had available for use in advertising on our site.
But that was just before the dot-com bust and the company’s business plan relied heavily on ad revenues, so we weren’t able to end up doing much with it. :(
I just hope Google doesn’t go too far. For example, knowing where you live, who you are, and personal information.