I’ve been writing about Google StreetView since its launch — and largely been a defender of the utility of the images and technology. But now the joke is on me; here’s a picture of our cars in the driveway:
It still think the technology is very useful. Yes, it’s a little strange.
It’s all just part of living in a world without privacy.
___
More discussion of StreetView this morning from a piece I wrote at Search Engine Land.
Here’s the paradox: consumers want “relevant ads” but don’t like to be tracked. MediaPost reports on the latest data to capture this:
Nearly three out of four people, or 71%, [in a Truste survey] said they realize that companies track their Web browsing activity for purposes of sending them targeted ads. The majority–57%–said they are not comfortable with the practice, even when their browsing history can’t be linked to their names.
At the same time, 72% of Web users also told researchers they find irrelevant ads “intrusive and annoying,” although one key strategy for displaying relevant ads relies on behavioral targeting, or monitoring where people go online and then determining their interests . . .
I previously wrote about how overzealous BT will bring regulation that effectively hobbles it: The Ad Predicament and the End of Tracking?
I wrote below that consumer privacy concerns may create problems for publishers, ad networks and advertisers seeking to turn aggressive targeting into greater relevance for display ads just as brand advertisers are starting to shift big dollars online.
However there are interesting potential alternatives to BT for display, which include units such as Linkstorm’s overlays, widgets (e.g., Google Gadget Ads), brand advertising in search results (see also here), and other interactive display units such as Admission’s dynamic platform.
Here’s an example of the latter’s inventory based display advertising:
Clicking on any of the individual cars opens a window as follows that becomes a lead-gen form (and could contain video):
These sorts of ads can take ride on top of BT; however, more importantly, such units can be effective outside of it. They can be targeted contextually to the content of a site or to a geography or both without relying on any consumer data mining. Consumers interact with the ads and then self-select, turning a display ad into “directional advertising” — the equivalent of the behavior that has made search so effective. (And some of these ad units include a search box as well.)
As mentioned, there are a range of companies offering display advertising with interactive capabilities or elements. But if legislation or regulations are enacted that require tracking notifications and consumer opt-out opportunities, these sorts of alternative strategies to make display ads more effective, by making them highly interactive, are going to be the way that the industry needs to go.
See this related piece I wrote at SEL regarding branding in search results.
____
Disclosure: I’m an advisor to Admission Corp.
At a very crude level here’s where we are today:
Previously I wrote that if publishers, portals and other became too aggressive in their efforts to data mine and target/retarget, you’d see regulation and legislation. Well here’s the first of it:
After reading about how Internet companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo collect information about people online and use it for targeted advertising, one New York assemblyman said there ought to be a law.
Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, the sponsor of a New York bill to limit how companies collect data on computer users.
So he drafted a bill, now gathering support in Albany, that would make it a crime — punishable by a fine to be determined — for certain Web companies to use personal information about consumers for advertising without their consent.
And because it would be extraordinarily difficult for the companies that collect such data to adhere to stricter rules for people in New York alone, these companies would probably have to adjust their rules everywhere, effectively turning the New York legislation into national law.
From a legal standpoint this law wouldn’t survive a court challenge because, assuming it passed, it would violate the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution, which doesn’t allow individual states to regulate “interstate commerce.” Of course there are exceptions one can find but this wouldn’t be one of them.
What’s significant here is that it represents a first step in what is sure to be an ongoing legislative and regulatory discussion of consumer privacy. This is analogous to what happened with Click Fraud only more extreme: the search engines failed to “get out in front” of the issue from a PR perspective until they’d been repeatedly hammered in the press.
There are efforts to “self-regulate” BT within the IAB. But those efforts will need to be stepped up and become a lot more public or all the anticipated benefits of BT and other, similar schemes are going to go away as legislators impose restrictions on Web publishers and ad networks that require notification of tracking and the ability to opt-out.
That legislation or regulatory action would likely come amid a flurry of negative publicity in newspaper articles and on TV news broadcasts — publicity that will make ad networks and companies like AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft, Google and others look highly sinister. In that context, how many consumers, once they discover they’re being “tracked,” are likely to not opt out? I would say fewer than will buy the argument that the ads they’re getting by not doing so are more “relevant.”
There is a movement afoot for ISPs to get into online advertising, in terms of providing data support and tracking for ad serving purposes. Phorm in the UK and and ISPs in the US are seeking to take data on users and their behavior and factor it into online ad targeting.
From a “local” standpoint, this will potentially improve geotargeting. But the emphasis and focus of discussion is on BT and serving brand advertising that relies on deeper data mining about individuals. In my opinion, BT may ultimately collapse under the weight of its own “greed.” It reportedly works but there are going to have to be very high-profile and voluntary consumer privacy measures taken by the involved companies themselves or outside forces are going to try and reign it in.
BT is fairly shadowy right now in terms of consumer awareness and understanding. Consumers want more “relevant” ads but are also uncomfortable with being “tracked.”
While US regulatory agencies are generally ambivalent about consumer interests and tend to favor business, in Europe the European Commission is going much farther to safeguard privacy. We may see some fairly aggressive positions taken in Europe that require actions on the part of search engines and portals at odds with BT capabilities and objectives. It’s not clear at the moment what these might be as a practical matter.
Privacy is a once again a huge issue (see my post on Google Health and consumer privacy).
The online ad industry’s general disregard of the consumer — notwithstanding rhetoric to the contrary — and its desire to offer ever more specific and powerful targeting capabilities to marketers may ultimately “kill the golden goose” by failing to properly self-regulate or educate the public and legislators.
Search is largely immune because it’s “directional” and doesn’t rely on data mining, although Google has experimented with BT in search in the form of ads based on past queries.
Here’s a new (minor but useful) feature from Google Maps: directions without addresses.
And here’s a funny but pointed video (courtesy of Google Blogoscoped) about Maps/StreetView and privacy (not from Google).
And here’s my post on Data Privacy Day from SEL.
___
I used Google’s My Maps to make a list of open houses this weekend as I was testing out the DotHomes real estate search engine. It was very helpful and other real estate sites should take a look at developing similar functionality. (Think about the ad inventory as users print out these maps and take them in the car on Sunday to look at open houses.)
SEL has the explanation of the formally launched Ask Eraser, which is the most transparent and progressive of search privacy programs.
Here’s more from Miguel Helft at the NY Times. Will it pressure or challenge other search engines to adopt similar policies? Not immediately but over the long term — yes.
Google is apparently going to blur the faces of people and other identifying information in Europe (and probably Canada) as it rolls out StreetView in those markets.
It will likely do the same in the US says IDG News. This is clearly the right move for the company and would eliminate some persistent concerns about what is otherwise a terrific product.
If you haven’t seen Peter Weir’s 1998 film The Truman Show you should. It’s a great, darkly satirical movie that anticipates the rise of YouTube, online TV, the no-privacy future — and numerous people turning their lives and experiences into fodder for online entertainment.
Apropos of that is this video interview with Sarah Meyers. It almost plays like a parody of itself, but both she and her interviewer are in total earnest. I had never heard of her until I read this post on TechCrunch.
On the one hand you could see this young woman as a shrewd self promoter, bootstrapping herself into a career in “TV.” But on the other you could see her as a representative of a generation (I’m 43) that has a diminishing sense of the value of privacy and has been raised on Oprah and Jerry Springer where people willingly exploit their own lives for attention, celebrity and financial gain.
I’m struck that is woman, as a “lifecaster,” is simply an extreme version of something that many people now aspire to: notoriety for its own sake. By the same token, making all your interests and activities known on Facebook is another example, on the continuum, of this phenomenon.
As a friend of mine said to me this morning, “it’s a perfect marriage of narcissism and voyeurism.”
Beacon’s “opt-out” policy was a clear example of hubris on the part of the folks at Facebook:
“There is no opting out of advertising,” Mark Zuckerberg reportedly said when the new ad programs were announced earlier this month.
But apparently there is . . .
The firestorm of controversy that surrounded the Beacon tracking program is what the Greek’s meant by “nemesis”: “to give what is due.” The belief that Facebook users’ would just live with the near-involuntary tracking and broadcasting of their non-Facebook actions and transactions was born of a sense of invulnerability and momentum that Facebook gained from its growth and its new $15 billion valuation.
But the controversy would not go away and so last night Facebook, under pressure, made changes to the program that make it an opt-in rather than an opt-out. That was the single biggest issue with the program. And that’s good news for users. As I’ve argued previously:
In many situations, I probably wouldn’t care if people knew I wrote a favorable restaurant review or saw a particular movie. But I don’t want people to know where I stay or that I’m renting particular cars in particular places and so on. It’s this blanket tracking and data capture that creates all the privacy objections and problems — and potential spam in the newsfeeds.
Now with the program being an opt-in people will have to explicitly authorize the distribution of the information captured by Beacon. Many Facebook critics will not be entirely satisfied because the company is still tracking and capturing user behavior on those third-party sites. But the company has wisely done the right thing here, albeit because of heavy negative PR.
For more discussion, here’s my write up of the changes from SEL (which includes Facebook’s explanation of the changes) and here’s a nice overview of the changes from the New York Times’ Brad Stone.
___
Facebook has reportedly raised another $60 million, bringing this latest round to $300 million. The WSJ’s Kara Swisher reports that the investor is Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing. Make that ka-ching!
Most people don’t care about online privacy as a practical matter. If they’re polled in the abstract they express concern but their behavior doesn’t necessarily reflect that concern. Partly that’s because they don’t know when or how they’re being tracked.
Facebook Beacon has garnered a fair bit of criticism for its monitoring/tracking of user behavior and opt-out (rather than opt-in) character.
But this past weekend, I was somewhat disturbed to find it in action when I made a rental car reservation on Hotwire. I didn’t realize I was still signed in to Facebook and when I concluded the reservation, which was quite a bit cheaper than on other sites BTW, I saw the little Beacon icon show up in the lower right corner of my screen. Gotta shut that down before it disappears I immediately thought.
In many situations, I probably wouldn’t care if people knew I wrote a favorable restaurant review or saw a particular movie. But I don’t want people to know where I stay or that I’m renting particular cars in particular places and so on. It’s this blanket tracking and data capture that creates all the privacy objections and problems — and potential spam in the newsfeeds.
The tool would be much more valuable to everyone if it could be made more selective (perhaps categories of activities that I don’t mind sharing, etc.). However, Facebook makes it a case-by-case opt-out because virtually no one would do it if it were an opt-in; and the value of the Beacon program for advertisers would be severely limited accordingly.
In this Google Blog post, Google discusses its privacy protection efforts and its response to the recent EU complaint and investigation about data retention. In this long post Danny Sullivan expresses his views on the issue of data retention, the EU and Google’s position (generally favorable to Google).
I don’t want to discuss the merits of the particular data retention issue. I want to discuss a potential shift that’s happening around perceptions and privacy. I’ll start with “click fraud.”
When click fraud emerged as a regular press issue in early 2006 the response of the search engines was a relatively casual “trust us, we’re doing all we can to combat the problem.” After more than a year of articles in newspapers and business magazines, class action litigation and the emergence of a cottage industry that has an interest in hyping click fraud, the engines got wise and started doing something more “transparent” and proactive. In August of last year they formed a working group with the IAB to address the issue and, more recently, Yahoo! appointed a click quality czar — a great move that was overdue.
Click fraud and the way it became a PR problem for the engines — not that it has gone away — holds some lessons for handling the resurgent question of privacy now, and Google in particular. The issue of privacy is not limited to Google of course or to search. But Google is the most visible search engine and doing the most things right now that have perceived privacy implications:
The general public may be largely unaware of the privacy debate going on right now, but there’s an emerging danger here for Google. That danger is that favorable public sentiment toward the engine changes and people become fearful of Google. What might be called “Googlephobia” has been on the rise among some people who believe the company is now too powerful. That power is also tied in to the privacy issue.
Let’s segment the public into three groups: insiders, influencers and everyone else. Let’s say that everyone who reads this blog qualifies as an “insider” (the earliest adopters). The colleagues we speak with on a regular basis but who don’t work in the Internet are the “influencers.” For example, I have a friend who is the head of a division of Wells Fargo who’s more savvy about technology but isn’t as close to the news as I am. Then there’s everyone else (for convenience’s sake).
Google rose to its mythic success on the heels of a better algorithm, positive buzz from insiders and early adopters and some lucky breaks (adoption by Yahoo! is one). Notwithstanding the findings of the recent InfoSpace/Dogpile search “overlap” study, the major search engines all do a good job of finding relevant results and deliver a generally good experience.
Part of what sustains Google’s leadership position is its brand strength and the good will of users. If Google’s reputation changes or the perception of the company sours then it has a major problem on its hands. And this is where I think Google is most vulnerable today, both on its own and competitively.
Ask’s UK-based “information underground” campaign (scroll for video) has a vaguely Orwellian implication: that it’s dangerous for one company to “control the Web’s information.” The not-so-subtext is that Google is Big Brother. While that may seem hyperbolic, some people are starting to feel that way.
I’ve had a number of conversations with friends who don’t work in the Internet but are fairly informed and who are using Google but have a less “warm and fuzzy” feeling about the company than they used to. If the general public starts to feel that Google is a big, scary company that is tracking them – whether or not that’s a rational perception — it could cause people to look for alternatives.
I believe that many Google insiders don’t see this issue or danger clearly because they’re immersed in the Google culture, which is fun and progressive. So what can or should Google do?
As it did with the EU, the company should go an extra mile/kilometer to address privacy concerns early and quickly. It shouldn’t take the opaque “trust us” position it did initially with click fraud. Google must be extremely transparent and explicit with users about its privacy protections and the controls it offers them. It’s not clear to me that “everyone else” has any understanding of what’s on this page.
I could be wrong about all this of course. . . but the next Google could emerge not by providing more relevant results, but by offering a comparable experience and more assurances to users about security and privacy.
___
Related: Gary Price points to a Carnegie Mellon study that argues “People are willing to pay extra to buy items from online retailers when they can easily ascertain how retailers’ policies will protect their privacy.”
There are a lot of links flying around — just like the in the A9 Block View days — showing Google’s Street View capturing individuals in the act of taking out the garbage, jogging or going in to an adult bookstore.
I wrote about this at some length this morning:
Privacy is back – or at least the issue is back. A range events, announcements and investigations over the past several months have put privacy back in the headlines. And today the links are coming in showing funny, revealing or potentially embarrassing photos of people on Google’s new Street View photography. (To a large degree this is a replay of discussion and issues that arose when A9 introduced “Block View” two years ago.)
First the photographs:
- Robots.txt for a new era?
- Car in the driveway (with license plate visible).
- Entering the adult bookstore.
- Taking out the trash.
- Trying to shed those extra pounds.
BoingBoing has discussion, reader comments and links to a variety of “Street View Sightings.” Wired also collects a number of photographs, including a police bust, that are live on Street View.
…
Most people who are reacting negatively to Street View are responding “viscerally” to the idea of cameras now being everywhere and their actions being potentially captured and recorded at any given moment. I’m not throwing up my hands when I say this is now the world we live in — a world of omnipresent cameras, monitoring and recording.
Google Street View is a valuable and practical addition to Google Maps but it also helps raise important, larger questions about privacy in the Internet era. There needs to be a serious public and political debate about privacy at a time when search engines make personal information so readily discoverable and ubiquitous cameras and video capture increasing amounts of what goes on in public — and private life.
The full post, including some discussion of applicable law, is at Search Engine Land.
Here’s the story from the NY Times:
The Federal Trade Commission has opened a preliminary antitrust investigation into Google’s planned $3.1 billion purchase of the online advertising company DoubleClick, an industry executive briefed on the agency’s plans said yesterday.
The inquiry began at the end of last week, after it was decided that the Federal Trade Commission instead of the Justice Department would conduct the review, said the executive, who asked not to be identified because he had not been authorized to speak. The two agencies split the duties of antitrust enforcement.
An F.T.C. spokesman said yesterday that the agency did not comment on pending inquiries.
The EU also has an investigation going against Google (and MSFT, Yahoo). Google has faced lots of legal issues and litigation since it went public. The anti-trust “complaints” by big corporate competitors ring somewhat hollow and, I believe, are part of a shrewd PR campaign against the search market share leader.
But this is where Google is vulnerable. I don’t think the FTC will block the DoubleClick acquisition ultimately. I think the real danger for Google now lies in its footprint and market power. Consumers show no signs of abandoning Google, as it continues to gain search share.
If Google becomes seen as too powerful or in control of too much consumer data and thus a privacy risk it may erode the public’s confidence in Google. This is what I meant when I said that as Google appears to be more powerful than ever it is increasingly vulnerable.
___
Related: Microsoft’s Don Dodge posts on the relationship between search market share and market capitalization. He also analyzes Google’s revenues.
Here’s Danny Sullivan’s post about how an Internet search pursuant to a random border stop of a Canadian psychotherapist revealed he had written an article years ago on the relative merits of hallucinogens vs. traditional psychotherapy. After being interrogated (based on the article he wrote) he was denied entry to the US upon admitting to using LSD himself in the past.
Whatever your views of his particular situation (mine are very dim of the government action) the larger issue it raises is that search engines will allow your “paper trail” to follow you in perpetuity. Everything (text, audio, video) that is cataloged or posted online could remain part of your “record” indefinitely.
Searching on people’s names is an increasingly common, quick way of checking people out. And as time goes on, the online record for many people may get more and more scary (in terms of stuff they’d like to forget themselves let alone conceal from others).
This raises all kinds of issues that people haven’t thought through. Recall that the US embarked on a now aborted Total/Terrorism Awareness Initiative, which was abandoned after rights and privacy groups raised persistent objections. That may be back in “de facto” form with the combination of a kind of permanent online record of all your activity and Internet search, which quickly facilitates its discovery.
PaidContent covers a complaint filed by consumer advocacy groups with the Federal Trade Commission regarding online advertising and consumer privacy. (You can download and read the entire complaint if you like.)
The thrust of the complaint involves using consumer registration data as the basis for ad targeting, something that both Microsoft and Yahoo! currently do, among others including online newspapers. Google is also named in the complaint.
Paid search is generally safe but behavioral and other types of precision ad targeting (e.g., demographic) — one of the chief selling points of online vs. traditional media — may ultimately have to be changed if this issue has “legs.”
Since most government agencies are now basically corrupt (there’s a cynical, political comment) and are only motivated by external rewards and punishments (rather than legal duty), the question of whether any action is taken will depend almost entirely on political pressure and media exposure.
One compromise might be to beef up disclosure requirements to consumers about how their data may be used upon registration and have strict controls to ensure that no personally identifiable information is made available to marketers (this is what the portals would say is now the case).
PaidContent also links to a more digestible WashingtonPost story about the complaint and the issue.
Om Malik has a roundup of municipal and state-wide efforts to build out free or low-cost networks. The NY Times discusses a partnership to bring free (and fee-based) Wi-Fi to SiliconValley as a whole.
Broadly available, low-cost Wi-Fi means:
But it also potentially means less data security and more nasty surveillance by crooked governments or private sector criminals.
Even as my wife loads up the car — we’re heading off for a week beyond the range of cellphones and email — I’m scrambling to get down some last-minute thoughts. There were three or four “meaty” posts I was going to do that will become abbreviated instead:
This LA Times poll (reg. req’d) shows that younger people aren’t as interested in mobile video as the conventional wisdom suggests.
And here’s a piece from USAToday (last week) on mobile advertising featuring Jumptap an interesting white label mobile search/content/ad company I spoke with at some length in the last couple weeks.
This piece from Saturday’s NY Times (reg. req’d) on privacy suggests (in the wake of AOL’s data fiasco) that there’s an opportunity for a search engine that better guards users’ privacy and doesn’t store data to emerge or seize the moment and market the heck out of that feature.
Again, no posts this week. I’ll be back on 8/20.
Because the interview with Eric Schmidt ran long there wasn’t much time to ask questions (especially about local or SMEs). A few things struck me however about the discussion. Here are some thoughts and random observations:
Schmidt made a very sincere and believable “appearance” (as they say in the legal profession). I buy that he means what he says.
He spoke at some length about the danger of “unscrupulous governments” (whether the US or foreign) trying to access search logs (questions prompted by the AOL fiasco). Assumed but never entirely justified in all his comments (about privacy and security) was that Google was inherently more trustworthy than those who might want the data. Danny Sullivan pressed Schmidt on this point but the Google CEO didn’t outline any specific processes or procedures to safeguard the data. He merely stated that what happened at AOL wouldn’t happen with Google (though he qualified with “never say never.”)
Schmidt broadly alluded to a huge vision for Google, which he has done before: that of bringing Google’s “targeting capability” to all media. Schmidt said, “One of the outcomes, if we do this right, is fewer ads that are more relevant to you.”
Another interesting remark was about the litigation that Google has confronted on multiple fronts. He said that he felt that at least some of the litigation was “a business negotiation being conducted in the courts.”
Schmidt also sneaked in unsolicited references to Google Checkout, which I thought was quite interesting. He also joked about not using Google as a verb for trademark reasons.
Finally he made the often-heard statement that “consumers are just a click away from our competitors.” I don’t believe this. As I’ve argued before I think there’s a lot of habitual behavior now in search. There have been relevance studies that basically argue the quality of search results has reached parity across a number of engines (there are people now arguing in fact that MSN/Windows Live is better).
Let’s assume that the relevancy gap has closed among engines. Google’s share has continued to grow. Why? It’s the power of the Google brand, users’ general satisfaction with Google and their habitual behavior – Google is familiar.
All of that means, at least for the foreseeable future, Google will likely remain atop its search perch.
Om Malik “deconstructs” the Google-News Corp/Fox deal. Any way you slice it it’s a win for Google. (Here’s a very bullish assessment from the Internet Stock Blog).
Separately the NY Times (reg. req’d) drills down into the AOL search database debacle. There’s far too much in “the database” for an unscrupulous government now to use against individuals. And most consumers have no idea how much of their data and behavior is now “on file.”
“Total Information Awareness,” which died legislatively because of a political uproar a few years ago is now here through the back door in the form of government access to communications records (search logs, phone records, etc.). Privacy is an issue we must again take seriously.
