At 01:02 PM 8/22/2005, Doug Henwood wrote:
Jim Devine wrote:
I recently installed "Google desktop," which seems a worthy program.
Interestingly, it's free. As far as I can tell, it doesn't involve any
advertising. Howe does Google make a profit?
Free, with no advertising...for now. You're probably an undisclosed
beta tester.
Doug
They use the data on how people surf the net to sell to advertisers. I
always thought the way they doled out gmail accounts was fascinating too.
If I remember correctly, one of the guys who worked on Google as a grad
student (at Stanford? and with .gov funds, IIRC?) was interested in the way
people network and the way information is networked: who knows whom. So,
when you were given a gmail account, which became coveted at first by its
relative scarcity and the fact that (it seemed) it was mostly techy types
who had them, you could only share your free accounts by giving up the
e-mail address of the persons to whom you wanted to extend gmail invites.
It wasn't so much the e-mail address that was valuable to Google. I tested
this and I haven't gotten any spam to an address that I 'shared' but
haven't used for anything else but the gmail account.
Rather, it is the information about who knows whom. 'Who' in cyberspace,
of course, is limited to things like operating system, screen resolution,
whether you have Flash/Javascript installed, IP address (which can usually
be situated geographically), browser software, etc. But it isn't always
limited, especially once you start purchasing things. Thus, once that IP
addresses purchases "100 Ways to spice up your sex life" at Amazon, there's
information connected to the tech data: address, name, e-mail address, and
any other demographic information the user shared with Amazon, including
the wish list and viewing data stored in Amazon's databases.
There's a bounty of information to anyone interested in marketing via the
Internet.
Likewise, being able to connect this demographic data to the kinds of
search terms you key in, which is what Google's taking advantage of I
suspect (I haven't looked at the toolbar and won't use them) the sites you
visit, etc. -- more good news for the advertisers.
There are always some people (many?) who tell the truth when they fill out
the forms online, giving out valuable demographic data such as where they
live, income, occupation, gender, age, and what kind of online media they
view/read.
Some users have enough cookies and spyware on their machine, embedded in
all those "free tools" and toolbars (I doubt Google's toolbar is loaded
with spyware), that it's a piece of cake to track where that IP address
goes on the 'net.
(While people supposedly have dynamic IP addresses these days, for all
intents and purposes, that IP addy usually remains static (the same) unless
you unplug it long enough and do so when someone else in the LAN has
unplugged their's. We unplugged our modem once a day, sometimes more,
trying to get a new IP address this past month. No joy -- until a bad
lightening storm struck and a lot of other users in our LAN unplugged ther's).
The same kind of information/network mapping was behind the work of Jonah
Peretti, the brain behind the outraged chainmail: "isn't Nike horrible for
not putting the slogan 'made by sweatshop labor' on my Nike sneakers." (It
astounded me when I first read that mail that no one wondered why someone
who thinks Nikes are made with sweatshop was buying Nikes and ordering a
premium service to begin with. It made no sense.)
Peretti was also behind the seemingly "no marketing or advertising
involved" Black People Love Us.com, and Rejection Line (quite funny).
www.alternet.org/story.html%3FStoryID%3D12276&ei=YCkLQ__sE8bc4QGz0viXDg
These were all ways of testing out the concept to gather information that
could be used by marketers: how to get people to market your product by
generating enough buzz, seemingly unconnected to any profit-making motive,
so that people voluntarily send an e-mail to everyone they know because
something was funny (remember the phone number you could call and the
voicemail with a duck quack?) or outrageous (the Peretti Nike stunt).
If you're bored, read through the book written about marketing on the Web,
from the 90s. Fascinating stuff.
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