InternetNews has a warm & fuzzy recount of a press event with Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin where they provide a lot of doublespeak in response to growing concerns that recent actions by Google violate their “Don’t be evil” pledge. Here’s a nugget regarding the collection or personal information in support of targeted advertising:
Another press question was about using personal information to fuel search ads. The issue has become a hot button recently, thanks to the launch of Microsoft’s rival MSN adCenter, which utilizes user demographic information.
In Larry Page’s view gathering the data is not the problem. “I think that simple kinds of information about people if there is value in it is not an issue for us or any other large Internet company to gather that data in a way that makes sense for users,” he said.
Huh?
MichaelZimmer.org 