Don’t think Google Knows Where You Are and What You are Doing?
November 11th, 2006 by Michael Gray in GoogleIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Read my top posts or learn more about Michael Gray. Want more frequent updates follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
So I signed into my account on Dodgeball.com to see if anyone was my friend and sadly I had no friends (dramatic pause, followed by pathetic whimpring). I then went to adwords to check to see how the keywords I uploaded earlier today were doing after the maintenance update today. I was well somewhat bothered by the error message I got …
Now before one of you wise asses says “Hey Gray didn’t you know Google owns dodgeball, I mean you wrote the story on Threadwatch didn’t you?”. Yes Mary Sunshine I did, however I’m old enough to remember when there was no session state persistancy on the web, and things existed in unconnected blocks. I’m also old enough to remember when cookies were invented, with the promise that information from one domain never crossed the other. I also remember the big bruhaha and hand wringing when it was discovered the doubleclick who served banners (and cookies) had the ability to track you across multiple websites, if they also served doubleclick banners. My baseline for internet experiences is back in those heady days of blissful anonymous surfing.
So why is this so shocking, I guess it’s the first time I’ve had it thrown up in my face that data that wasn’t coming from adwords.google.com, google.com/adsense/, or mail.google.com was being shared behind the scenes, and I’m not really happy about it. If you want to be my friend on Dodgeball.com and make it easy to meet with me in Vegas go for it. However if you think it’s not such a good idea well I’m with you on that.
Sphere It
November 11th, 2006 at 11:23 pm
I take your point, but I think most people like it when you can use the same login for a company’s services.
November 11th, 2006 at 11:57 pm
Yes, its becoming quite tedious to keep track of what login (I want to) have access to what area and log in and out with the correct sign in correctly.
Sure, I could just amalgamate them back to one sign on (a tricky task to undertake - adsense won’t do it, for a start) but… I don’t want Google to accumulate that much info about me!
I stopped using the frequent-flyers program at the local supermarket when they stopped returning a decent value, Google has never offered to pay me anything at all for my personal data!
And Matt - industry insider’s knowledge aside…. if its a different domain name, it should have a different sign on. Joe Public won’t realise they are on Google property when they visit Dodgeball, small copyright notice in the bottom line or not! Within the obviously Google properties is probably fair game.
November 12th, 2006 at 9:12 am
I must have 4 different Google logins so I get confused sometime when i get the red messages. Well actually the first thing that comes to mind is “Oh crap! they found out about my MFA sites and banned me!” I’m kidding of course!
November 12th, 2006 at 9:57 am
“I don’t want Google to accumulate that much info about me!
I stopped using the frequent-flyers program at the local supermarket when they stopped returning a decent value, Google has never offered to pay me anything at all for my personal data!”
Avril I totally agree
November 12th, 2006 at 10:00 am
“I don’t want Google to accumulate that much info about me”
Avril, I totally agree… They would ask what you had for dinner if they could.
November 12th, 2006 at 12:19 pm
I think it’s clear that a single login for different services is going to be advantageous for many people.
Like GW, though, I have multiple accounts to represent different businesses (I own a couple of different small businesses) so I try to use a different browser per login to simplify things, to help avoid the confusion from data-sharing.
November 12th, 2006 at 1:46 pm
What I find annoying is when I’m logged into Gmail, I have to log out to go check adsense. I keep my Adwords/Adsense account associated with a separate email/pass than my normal Google memberships for security reasons. I recommend everyone does the same.
If I could log into each separately, I could stop cursing at my computer screen so much
November 12th, 2006 at 1:51 pm
Another thing I find funny is that every time you go to Google Analytics, you have to enter into your password, even if you where just there using the same browser. Not so with Adwords/Adsense. Even though they are attached to money, they have lower security standards than GA. Hmmmm
November 12th, 2006 at 4:31 pm
Jeremy: I have the exact opposite - I have to log in to Adsense constantly (like every 20 minutes) but never need to log in to Analytics, except when I have swapped log ins.
How strange!
(Yo! Michael! How about a per-post comment feed on this thing?)
November 12th, 2006 at 5:02 pm
here’s the comment feed
http://www.wolf-howl.com/?feed=comments-rss2
November 12th, 2006 at 8:16 pm
Ta! A per-post feed is better, but I’ll take what I can get
November 12th, 2006 at 11:42 pm
I am not really seeing the issue here and company-wide logins are also available at Yahoo and MSN Passport.
DoubleClick’s situation was very different in that it was sitting on top of a network of websites not owned by Double-Click with improper disclosure of what was going on.
Additionally, they wanted to create a full user profile linked with Abacus, which included personally data like address, names etc.
Honestly, in the long run, when it comes to privacy issues Yahoo knows more about all of us:
- Flickr (Photos, of your vacation, friends)
- Upcoming (what parties, concerts you attend)
- Del.icio.us (what websites we look at)
- Y! Answers (what youre interested about)
- Y! Personals (what kind of men/women you’re into)
- Y! Jobs (Resume)
And the list goes on…from Y! Travel
I’ve posted about this a long while go here:
http://www.emergence-media.com/2006/07/social-media-yahoo-and-data-mining/
November 12th, 2006 at 11:44 pm
On the Abacus bit, I found some links
http://www.slate.com/id/2129656/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DoubleClick
I guess they wanted to use third-party sources to collect user purchase and financial histories, which is a big issue as well.
November 13th, 2006 at 12:17 am
Yahoo has all those pieces but none of them are connected. My Flickr, delicious, and answers accounts don’t interface, on the front at least …
November 14th, 2006 at 4:12 am
Hi Michael,
At SES, Yahoo people that account integration wasnt a priority, but rather they’re focusing on building their product and relative user bases.
But in the end, like Google, Yahoo will have to begin uniting the accounts, as they already have with Flickr.
It’ll be interesting times when Yahoo does fully integrate - from a privacy and marketer’s perspective.