The Ads That Dare Not Speak Their Name

Remember Phorm, the evil data pimps who wanted to collect browsing data on Internet users so that they could deliver targeted advertising?

Well, yes, of course you do. It was only a few months ago that the company effectively folded in the UK, having been battered by a succession of staggeringly stupid PR blunders, leaving their investors seriously out of pocket.

So the world and its dog can breathe a sigh of relief that it's safe from this invidious form of advertising, which threatened to usher in a cataclysm unequalled in the annals of human history, surpassing the plagues of Egypt, the eruption of Krakatoa, the rise of Jedward etc. etc.

Er, actually, no. A little-known Internet firm called Google is doing exactly the same thing, with nary a murmur of discontent from the brave warriors who brought Phorm to its knees. And we're not talking about Google's gentlemanly habit of routinely reading Gmail users' emails so that they can serve them with targeted ads. No, it goes further than that.

Some of our more technically literate readers may know that the world's largest text ad broker has, for ages, served up different search results for users logged into its services, such as Google Calendar or Gmail. These search results are tailored to users' previous browsing behaviour, so if you spend a lot of time on bbc.co.uk/sport, Google search results will place this web page higher up the list when it's asked to search for "sport". This, of course, is an entirely selfless service from Google that helps users gain the most relevant results - and it's only coincidental that it helps them to make more money from behaviourally targeted ads.

No problem with that - Google fanbois presumably read the terms and conditions when they sign up to these services (doesn't everyone?). But now Google is "personalising" search results for any user, anywhere, regardless of whether they're signed in to Google or not, through cookies placed on unwitting users' computers.

We've covered behavioural targeting before and, while we don't think it's inherently evil, we do believe that it requires a delicate approach, along with rigorous adherence to best practice procedures to ensure that users are well-informed and are offered a clear choice about whether they want their browsing profiled. Google haven't gone out of their way to publicise their service; nor to explain how to turn it off (it is, naturally, turned on by default).

If companies continue to implement behavioural targeting in a sly, underhand way - as though it were something to be ashamed about - then one can hardly blame the public for being suspicious of it. Instead of cloaking it in the depths of a terms and conditions form, companies like Phorm and Google should communicate openly on the benefits of targeted ads and offers.

One final question remains: why has privacy campaigner Alex Hanff - the single-handed scourge of Phorm and NebuAd, whose brave and lonely battle against these Internet behemoths ended with a victory that brought dragons and St George to mind - been so silent on this issue? Alex, where are you?

Postscript: Google's CEO Eric Schmidt yesterday trotted out that favourite line of civil-liberties-deniers the world round: "If you have something you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." (©Richard Littlejohn / David Blunkett). How this statement sits with Google Chrome's infamous Incognito function - which hides your porn viewing from other users - remains unclear.

Google fails

Congratulations students of the globe! For anyone from the ages of 5 to 15 can enjoy Google’s new attempt at structured data search: Google Squared. And that’s presumably the only group of people that would ever consider using it. Remember when you were eight and your teacher asked you to make a pretty table on British Monarchy with all the monarchs of Britain including their children, spouses and important dates? How you pored over huge encyclopaedias to get all the information? Well, Google Squared officially heralds the end of early education as all these tasks are completed in a matter of seconds for our burgeoning historians and other putative scientists.

If only it were that easy. Just as Babel Fish translate could only ever get a student 12/20 on French translation homework after its launch all those years ago, Google Squared fails to achieve… well anything it’s going for really. A search for the British Monarchy in an attempt to tabulate a chronological factfile brings up a table with the following order – George VI, George II, George V. The genius that is Squared then goes off on a little jaunt that includes the Act of the Union, the Irish Free State, Buckingham Palace and the House of Orange. This just gets embarrassing: the picture accompanying the House of Orange? Why of course! Its Gemma Arterton arriving for the ‘Orange’ BAFTAs at the Royal Opera ‘House’. This is surely Google gone mad. Actually we shouldn’t really be surprised; to be fair to Google, nowadays the Bond Girl must get more hits than the Dutch royals.

It’s rather life affirming to know that even the great god Google isn’t completely infallible. This is an exciting day indeed. This revelation is like those wonderful moments when that beautiful woman who walks like she is better than everyone else trips and falls flat on her face on Oxford Street. At the Christmas Light switch on. On the podium. And the woman is Kate Moss.

One must presumably conclude that the only reason Google released this in such an awkward condition was to distract attention from somewhere else: another attempt to make searching intelligent recently arrived in the form of Wolfram Alpha, the computational knowledge engine. It proclaims to ‘generate output by doing computations from its own internal knowledge base, instead of searching the web and returning links.’ This means, instead of producing lists of useless links or grids of questionable information, it creates pages to answer your search, to the best of its ability. When asked, ‘How many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a man?’, the clever engine replies, ‘The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind. (according to Bob Dylan).’ Indeed.