Hacker News Reader

Comment by GavinB | Hacker News Reader

This is what Google does. What you search is becoming a better and better predictor of what you will do. Most searches are based on future plans, purchase, or interests. They even know your current and future locations if you use google maps for directions. If you use gmail, Google can tell that you just broke up with your girlfriend, or are graduating college.

Sidenote: we don't "give away" this information. We exchange it for the value of the information we are searching for. Microsoft has even experimented with paying people (with discounts) to use Bing's product search features.

View on HN

I have thought about this idea of broadcasting my plans for a while now. Everybody is saying that google's adsense is the biggest breakthrough in advertising in years. Think about the potential of being able to register that you are thinking about buying a car and then only seeing car commercials. I'm not talking about just adsense on the right margin of webpages but even in your tv shows and radio programs on the way into work. Or being able to say "Hey I'm overweight I want to ban all ads for unhealthy food and or alcohol across the board!". Currently I'm thinking of remodeling my kitchen; I would love to only see ads for local companies that can do this. I mean sometimes I spend my free time researching which computer I want to buy. I can't imagine that companies wouldn't want to take advantage of this and put in custom ads for me. I realize that this would represent a shift of power from the ad agencies to the consumer but so be it. I think the companies buying ads would benefit from more targeted advertisements.

The question is whether showing you adverts that you think you'd like to see is more or less effective than inferring what adverts you'd like to see based on your actions (you're reading a blog about gardening -> show gardening adverts,etc).

It is almost freaky when I go to type something I thought was obscure into the google search bar and it predicts what I am going to type after the first word.

A less obscure example (but the only one I could think of) is when I type is "How to fix " and it correctly filled in "a leaky faucet". No context, but it guessed correctly.

It autocompletes the same thing for me. Leaky faucets are a common problem; I suspect this is a case of confirmation bias.

Far spookier is the autocompletion for "a pair of pl".

how to fix -> ticking clicking sound in macbook pro unibody

Seems like the faucets are better here, but the macbooks are broken.

No suggestion for "a pair of pl".

Where I am, "a pair of pl" autocompletes to "a pair of pliers and a blowtorch", not just "a pair of pliers".

This is a quote from Pulp Fiction.

Agreed. I was hanging out with Friends last night in Foster City, CA, and I had decided that I was going to spend Thanksgiving in Reno. A few of my friends said "Is there anything to do other than Gamble in Reno?" So, I did what any silicon valley denizen would do, an whipped out my iphone. I typed in the following:

What is there

That's it, just three words.

Third line down on my screen, courtesy of google, was:

"What is there to do in Reno"

Scared the living crap out of me.

Ironically, the "French Crush" commercial directly advertised this transaction. Play cute music against a cute story and highlighting the fact that you can be very accurately understood and predicted based on Google searches becomes heartwarming.

Oui--heartwarming, and not a post-apocalyptic nightmare scenario. I'd like a low-powered computing device that (a) observes my habits and emulates their neighboring variations in a sandbox and (b) I can unplug if I choose, so as to carry the quantitative overload of life, but help ONLY ME, recurse for all others.

That's quite perceptive of you. I hope more people look at Google that way. I especially hope Google management looks at it that way. I think this perspective always gets lost on people both inside and outside Google when they talk about Facebook overtaking Google, or when they fret over Google not making big in the social networking space.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com