When you mention bad press around online privacy, there are two companies that come to the forefront: Google and Facebook. Go ahead, do a search for “online privacy” and be sure to click on the news section of Google search or Bing, and let me know what you get.
As I was following my morning news on Twitter, I saw a link from a Seattle friend of mine, @Weave. Eric Weaver has had some issues with Facebook’s policy changes and has scaled back and limited his use of the service. Oh yeah, and Eric’s a consultant like myself, so he knows the space really well. This wasn’t a rash decision on his part. I don’t agree with all of Eric’s conclusions, but I respect the hell out of him and I don’t think he’s totally wrong to be concerned. But as for me, all my privacy settings are still set wide open. But because I know Eric’s doing his homework, I’m interested in this kind of news that he shares.
So, Eric linked to this article on CNN, which is actually talks about the double whammy of Google combining their services like Google+ into search and the US government trying to pass laws like SOPA.
But what I found really interesting was the advertisement that ran right alongside the article. I’ve highlighted the ad in red.
Let me just say that this was no accident. Google is targeting these ads to appear next to articles using a specific set of keywords, probably some combination of privacy, Google, personal data, etc.
Now, I’m not criticizing Google for doing this, in fact I think it’s a smart thing for companies to do. If you want to make sure your side of the story is being told, this is a great way to do it. Has anyone else seen these ads? Do you think this is a good tactic or not?
