I had to chuckle when I saw the headline: "Google CEO: Get Ready for Cellphone Ads" on the US News and World Report Blog.
- Google can't help but salivate over how valuable "targeted" ads could be on the most personal of devices -- the cell phone.
While Google's standard line is that Google is all about the "user" -- stories like this shed light on the truth -- it's really all about Google.
Google's self-centered, megalomaniacal mission to organize the world's information to be accessible and useful to Google -- blind Google to the very different privacy reality of the cellphone world:
- Cell phone users basically aren't subject to unsolicited ads now;
- Tens of millions of American cell phone users have signed up their cell numbers for the "Do Not Call" list, (translation: don't bother me Google), and
- There is substantial resistance to having cell numbers publicly listed because many users don't want to be bothered with unwanted solicitation calls at their most personal moments or places.
- (It appears Google has amnesia about the deluge of telephone solictiation/advertising phone calls at dinnertime that led to a national political revolt called the "Do Not Call" list during an otherwise generally de-regulatory Administration.)
Moreover, Google internally is salivating that with their Google Earth, Google Streetview, Gmail's automated snoop reader, Google's comprehensive user search history, and new GPS ability to track/stalk users by location, that many people may not appreciate being on Google's universal surveilance leash.
- Imagine, as you reach for your choice of DVD at blockbuster your phone vibrates and indicates, why don't you select the other "better" DVD five feet to your left...
- Or imagine as you are buying potato chips your phone chirps with a prod to buy the lower fat alternative because they know that you search on personal fitness sites...
- Or imagine if they know you are a special doctor's office...
Does Google not appreciate that "targeting" ads means that individuals are actually being "targeted" by others they don't know?
- Do most Americans want to have a Google virtual "target" following them around wherever they go so that Google can laser shoot an ad at them whenever they are near something that one of Google's advertisers wants to sell them?
- Google should be more forthright and call its 'users' what they really are to Google -- "targets."
Google actually believes what is good for Google is good for everyone.
- In the cellphone world, Google's visions of dollar signs dancing in their heads, appear to be clouding their judgment about what "users" really want -- not to be anyone's stalking "target."
- Maybe the idea for a Do Not Track list will have to become a "Do Not Stalk" list -- in order to address Google's plan to turn cell phone users into "targets"...
