LOL - I just got a private gmail from a friend who likes cats. The text of her email did not mention a single word about cats, but the paid ads on the right were mostly for cat stuff.

I suppose Google knows what brand of toothpaste all my friends use, too.

And - Tgreer...

I have to admit that the first time I heard Google's explanation of PPC, that was exactly my theory - in fact, I just KNEW it in my bones. I said "Duh - Google is making all this up - all the way to the bank!" I worked for a large electronics store where they did the same thing while supposedly "Fixing" customers' computers. (For obscene amounts of money)

I also spent my $5 initiation fee for adwords, and decided on a budget of $200 a month. But I was trying to expose my blog about "xxxxxxxxx", (which Googles very well....)

But the single key words I chose were very expensive - since I was in competition with the enitire NAR. After over a week I still hadn't had one single click. So I suspended it.

I tend to be pretty suspicious of just about everyone lately. I suppose that "Dont' be evil" probably went out last season sometime....

:eek: Uh-oh. I Googled up this forum - I hope they don't read it and try to get back at me by taking it out on my friend's cats!

I still don't get the whole Google is evil thing. I'm a fan of the AdSense / AdWords system.

They aren't necessarily "evil". They are a business. Specifically, they are in the business of scraping/gathering (but not authoring) content, and then finding ways to sell advertising against it. I think that is unethical, but "evil"? Not quite. However, that is their business model, so it's a given that everything they do is to further their own business interests. The proliferation of junk sites that are essentially "made for Adsense" is their fault. Such sites dilute the overall value/quality of the web. Does Google care? Of course not, since they make huge amounts of money off of these sites. So the overall effect of Google and AdSense on the web has been overwhelmingly negative.

I view them in much the same light as environmentalists view timber companies. Whatever short-term benefit they bring has to be compared to the long-term effects on the environment. Google's environment is the web, and they are polluting it for their own financial gain.

(Not to mention the immense opportunity and temptation for privacy violations, since they not only scrape massive amounts of content, cache it essentially forever, but also maintain search history, personal emails, site traffic patterns, etc.)

I know...be careful not to lose you temper!

I only used gmail because "Adelphia" wouldn't fit on my business cards. But Adephia was just bought by Warner Cable, so maybe I can switch to RR.net. And try not to move or change.

They are polluting the web, and invading my privacy. Although I was just able to find an old, lost web page that I thought had been lost forever, and I was pretty glad for that.

Where on earth do they keep this stuff? Is it backed up on tape - on disk - on 16,000,000,000,000 little thumb drives?