Google and Facebook collect a butt load of information on a second by second basis.. and I can't help but to think: "What are doing.. or what are they GOING to be doing with that data?!"
You put up some good examples of how they can use that data in the very near future.. this guy orders pizza every Friday, if I'm Google, I want to serve the pizza shops who have the highest bids to you on Fridays.. right?
My question is: COULD they use this data to discriminate?
This isn't the best example, but think about this:
I go to Best Buy and get a GoPro camera. A week later, I return the camera. Best Buy has my credit card (or name, or rewards zone card, or whatever..) linked to my Facebook account. THEN, a week later, I post a video of me skiing.. a video captured with none other than the GoPro camera that I returned!
Again, maybe not the best example, but if Best Buy knew that I was not afraid to perform such an activity.. wouldn't they want to change their return policy for people like me? They wouldn't have to change the policy for EVERYONE, instead, they'd put people in buckets and treat them differently based on their past behavior.
It's basically like your credit score.. the better you use your credit, the better your score. Mess up a couple times, and it hurts your score and subsequently makes it harder to get more credit.
Data, data, data... augmented reality?, data, data...
PS: you were definitely be remarketed to for those guitars!
What would be cool is if one could easily remove their remarketing cookies.. so I'm shopping for furniture.. hitting a bunch of different furniture sites and landing on their remarketing lists.. and then I finally buy one.
If I'm lucky, the one I buy form will put me on a "purchased" list and use the custom combos to NOT show ADs to me anymore.. but what about the other 50 furniture sites I visited?
It'd be cool if I could remove all remarketing cookies from sites categorized as furniture all at once...
Is Google listening to this!? -- Sorry for the blog post of a comment.. great post Chris - I like the way you think
