37 ms·

I am pretty sure Google doesn't use your back search history in advertising targeting. They've said this many times. If they did, here's my past few searches:

by dcurtis 18y ago

I am pretty sure Google doesn't use your back search history in advertising targeting. They've said this many times. If they did, here's my past few searches: jordan ritter, glowing resin bar, mac hard drive use visualization, ironport, joost commercial, photoshop light bar, wiki futurama, wiki lost, xserve g4 wiki What does that list tell you about me or my buying habits? Now expand that list by a few thousand random search terms. Any more detail?

xirium 18y ago
DoubleClick is now part of Google and DoubleClick has a terrible record with promises and privacy. In the 1990s, DoubleClick said that they wouldn't associate off-line profiles with on-line profiles. They lied. DoubleClick and Google were very prolific with webbugs before their merger. (The latter is in the form of Google Analytics.) They're probably the most prolific now that they're combined. And they wouldn't do it unless they thought that the data was valuable.
natrius 18y ago
Those aren't "random" search terms. They tell quite a bit about the types of products you would be interested in, in this case hard drives and computers. Plus, data in aggregate is far more useful than data in isolation. Google knows what ads people with a similar search history have actually clicked on, and they can use that information to target ads at you. Google can rebuild most of the useful data from your Facebook profile (what kinds of books, movies, activities, etc. that you're interested in), and they also know what you're interested in right this moment. That is very valuable. I didn't know that they don't actually use historical search data, but they have the data and it can be used in the future. I don't see how using past searches to target ads is so different from using current searches.

37 ms·

I am pretty sure Google doesn't use your back search history in advertising targeting. They've said this many times. If they did, here's my past few searches:

by dcurtis 18y ago

xirium 18y ago
DoubleClick is now part of Google and DoubleClick has a terrible record with promises and privacy. In the 1990s, DoubleClick said that they wouldn't associate off-line profiles with on-line profiles. They lied. DoubleClick and Google were very prolific with webbugs before their merger. (The latter is in the form of Google Analytics.) They're probably the most prolific now that they're combined. And they wouldn't do it unless they thought that the data was valuable.
natrius 18y ago
Those aren't "random" search terms. They tell quite a bit about the types of products you would be interested in, in this case hard drives and computers. Plus, data in aggregate is far more useful than data in isolation. Google knows what ads people with a similar search history have actually clicked on, and they can use that information to target ads at you. Google can rebuild most of the useful data from your Facebook profile (what kinds of books, movies, activities, etc. that you're interested in), and they also know what you're interested in right this moment. That is very valuable. I didn't know that they don't actually use historical search data, but they have the data and it can be used in the future. I don't see how using past searches to target ads is so different from using current searches.