“Google, following in Facebook’s footsteps, wants to sell users’ endorsements to marketers to help them hawk their wares,” Claire Cain Miller and Vindu Goel report for The New York Times.
“On Friday, Google announced an update to its terms of service that allows the company to include adult users’ names, photos and comments in ads shown across the Web, based on ratings, reviews and posts they have made on Google Plus and other Google services like YouTube,” Miller and Goel report. “When the new ad policy goes live Nov. 11, Google will be able to show what the company calls shared endorsements on Google sites and across the Web, on the more than two million sites in Google’s display advertising network, which are viewed by an estimated one billion people.”
“If a user follows a bakery on Google Plus or gives an album four stars on the Google Play music service, for instance, that person’s name, photo and endorsement could show up in ads for that bakery or album. Google said it would give users the chance to opt out of being included in the new endorsements, and people under the age of 18 will automatically be excluded,” Miller and Goel report. “If a Google Plus user has shared comments with a limited set of people, only people in that circle will see the personalized ads. Ratings and reviews on services like Google Plus Local are automatically public and can be used in ads, unless a user opts out of shared endorsements.”
Miller and Goel report, “Currently, Google does not have an ad unit incorporating more social data ready to be used by advertisers, the company said. Instead, the company wants the ability to create such an ad unit in the future and is notifying users in advance.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Attribution: 9to5Mac. Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
And this my friends … is why you refuse to let YouTube change your user name to your personal name. Something they encourage – Every. Time. You. Log. In.
God I hate that.
I’ve quit using YouTube because of Google. Too bad, since there is a lot of good content, but I refuse to participate in Googles schemes.
Yeah, that and wanting my phone number. Just in case I forget my password, you know. Yeah, right.
It’s getting harder and harder to refuse though.
Next step is probably swapping the text of the Yes/No buttons just as you click it, “by mistake”.
I’ve noticed that. Very suspicious that it keeps popping up again and again.
Me too no YouTube anymore.
nauseating.
Lets see how long this lasts.
Just another example of King Obama at work. What next?
Obama?!? Look, he’s a terrible president, but this has nothing to do with him.
I would argue that he’s not even a terrible president, unless you got more than your opinion to backup that claim.
He makes Carter look good. However, Google’s intrusive policies have nothing to do with the current president. Google is evil all on it’s own.
What is it with Americans that they have this obsession with blaming every damned thing on the President? America seems to be the home for practically every stupid conspiracy going; is it something in the water, or what?
It certainly seems to breed an oddly twisted class of troll, like the current little cabal on here, with MacFreek, orangeagent, et al.
Maybe it’s being forced to live in their mom’s basement, living on a diet of cold pizza, Cheerios, cheese balls and Red Bull.
And having zero chance of ever, ever, getting a girlfriend.
Pretty keen insight for one living in the other side of the Tharp mid-oceanic ridge. Something in the water? I think yes — the waters of privilege, of entitlement, of historical amnesia, of empire rotting away from self-indulgent ideological games. You would be right, I think.
It’s not Obama’s fault you can’t afford a double wide.
I think orangeagent has had too many snickers bars. Dude Obama has nothing to do with Google’s policies. Wow you have a serious hate issue. I bet you think this government shut down is a good thing? Do you want to purchase ted cruz’s used shorts for a fix?
… with Maps in Mavericks, I’ll have one more way to opt of Google …
Hey Googlie, WHERE can I opt out of your poke me-poke you intrusion code…??
Hey Schmidt.. You want my data – PAY ME !!!
It is really the fault of those two little socialist sluts Sasha and Milia!
S T F U!
Tacky and an arsehole! What a combination!
Updating MDN’s link to story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/12/technology/google-sets-plan-to-sell-users-endorsements.html?_r=0
MDN,
Article links back on itself.
There’s still a Google Plus?
They are looking at you with those goo, goo, Googley eyes.
Google…inching ever closer to the creepy line — and ready to redefine “creepy” whenever they decide their revenue streams require an increase, and can flimflam the public and the FCC with Clintonesque logic.
http://creepyline.com/
FTC. Whatever
you are suffering from acronymorrhea.
Oh, the irony!
What are Google+ and Google Play, anyway?
I’m not worried about it. They really aren’t going to want to use my picture for anything, trust me. 😉
Best app I’ve have bought since owning a mac is little snitch. I have totally degoogled my myself. A slight pain to have disable a few rules whenever I want to watch a YouTube video but that’s once a month, if that. The goog.le shorten urls on from twitter don’t work either but combination of startpage, yahoo and bing replace any search requirements. Screw you google
I use “ixquick.com” which keeps all your searching private and ad free. Have used it for a few years and can’t really fault it. It tends to use Google for searching, but Google cannot identify you.
It has improved in last year or two, whereby in early days very few search pages were available, but now lots of pages. I find success rate even on obscure items to be around 95-98%. If item not found, revert to Google search and outcome is hit or miss.
Another tracking-free alternative is:
http://DuckDuckGo.com
It’s currently my default search engine.
Oops, sorry. Let’s use SSL:
https://duckduckgo.com